tihxavy  of  tire  Cheolojicd  ^emmarjp 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 
PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of 
Rev.  Robert  0.  Klrkwood 


BX  5937  .B83  B3  1910 
Brooks,  Phillips,  1835-1893.9^ 
The  battle  of  life,  and 
other  sermons 


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Princeton  Tlieological  Seminary  Library 


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Phillips  Brooks's  Sermons 

In  Ten  Volumes 

1st  Series 

The  Purpose  and  Use  of  Comfort 

And  Other  Sermons 

2d  Series 

The  Candle  of  the  Lord 

And  Other  Sermons 

3d  Series 

Sermons  Preached  in  English 
Churches 

And  Other  Sermons                         '; 

4th  Series 

Visions  and  Tasks      And  Other  Sermons 

5th  Series 

The  Light  of  the  World 

And  Other  Sermons 

6th  Series 

The  Battle  of   Life      And  Other  Sermons 

7th  Series 

Sermons  for  the  Principal   Festi- 
vals and  Fasts  of  the  Church  Year 

Edited  by  the  Rev.  John  Cotton  Brooks 

8th  Series 

New  Starts  in  Life     And  Other  Sermons 

9th  Series 

The  Law  of  Growth 

And  Other  Sermons 

10th  Series 

Seeking   Life      And  Other  Sermons 

E.   P.   Button   and   Company 

31  West  23d  Street                                                  New  York 

/^ 


pfil 


The  Battle  of \Life    ,,.v 


<^ 


And  Other  Sermons 


By  the 
Rt.  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  D.D. 


Sixth  Series 


NEW  YORK 

E  •  P  •  BUTTON  ^  COMPANY 
31  West  Twenty-Third  Street 

1910 


Copyright,  1803 


E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


First  Published  as  "  Sermons  "  VI. 


"Cbe  Itnicfecrbocfcer  preee.  f^eve  Igorft 


CONTENTS. 


Sermon  PAcn 

I.     The  Mystery  of  Iniquity 1 

"The  Mystery  of  Iniquity."  —  II.  Thess.  ii.  7. 
(March  19,  1865.) 

II.     The  Valley  of  Baca ^18 

"  Who  passing  through  tlie  Valley  of  Baca  make  it 
a  well;  the  rain  also  fiUeth  the  pools."  —  Psalms 
Ixxxiv.  G.     (March  12,  18G5.) 

III.  Homage  axd  Dedication 35 

"  And  tlie  four  and  twenty  Elders  fall  down  before 
Him  that  sat  on  the  throne,  and  worship  Him  that 
liveth  for  ever  and  ever,  and  Cast  their  Crowns  before 
the  throne."  — Revelation  iv.  10.     (Oct.  2C,  1873.) 

IV.  The  Egyptians  dead  upon  the  Seashore.       55 

"  And  Israel  saw  the  Egyptians  dead  upon  the  Sea- 
shore."—Exodus  xiv.  30.     (Sept.  21,  1890.) 

V.     The  Battle  of  Life 71 

"  For  we  wrestle  not  against  Flesh  and  Blood,  but 
against  Principalities,  against  Powers,  against  the 
Rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this  world,  against  Spiritual 
Wickedness  in  high  places."  —  Ephesians  vi,  12. 
(Nov.  1,  1885.) 

VI.     The  Dignity  and  Greatness  of  Faith      .     90 

"No  man  can  say  that  Jesus  is  the  Lord  but  by 
the  Holy  Ghost."  —  I.  Corinthians  xii.  3.     (1881.) 


IV  CONTENTS. 

Bbbmon  Pa6B 

VII.     The  Saxctuary  of  God 108 

"  Then  thought  I  to  understand  this,  but  it  was 
too  hard  for  me.  Until  I  went  into  the  Sanc- 
tuary of  God ;  then  understood  I  the  end  of  these 
men."  —  Psalms  Ixxiii.  10,  17.     (Nov.  24,  1S72.) 

YIII.     Come  axd  See 129 

"  Philip saith unto  him  '  Come  and  See.'"  —  John 
i.  46.     (Nov.  3,  1872.) 

IX.     The  Prixciple  of  the  Crust     ....     153 

"  Let  no  man  deceive  himself.  If  any  man  thiuk- 
eth  that  he  is  wise  among  you  in  this  world,  let  him 
become  a  fool,  that  he  may  be  wise."  —  I.  Corin- 
thians iii.  IS.     (Jan.  23,  18S7.) 

X.     The  Leadership  of  Christ 171 

"  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions.  I 
go  to  prepare  a  plate  for  you  •  and  I  m  ill  come 
again  and  receive  you  unto  myself."  —  John  xiv.  2. 
(Sept.  12,  1875.") 

XI.     Peace  ix  Believixg 187 

"  Now  the  God  of  hope  fill  you  with  all  Joy  and 
Peace  in  Believing,  that  ye  may  abound  in  Hope 
through  the  Power  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  —  Romans 
XV.  13.     (March  31,  1878.) 

XII.     Whole  Views  of  Life 208 

•' '  And  Balak  said  unto  him, '  Come,  I  pray  thee, 
with  me  unto  another  place,  from  whence  thou 
mayest  see  them.  Thou  shalt  see  but  the  iitmost 
part  of  them,  and  shalt  not  see  them  all :  and  curse 
me  them  from  thence.' "  —  Ndmbers  xxiii.  13. 
(Sept.  23,  1888.) 

XIII.     Higher  axd  Lower  Staxdards      .     .     .     224 

"  Demas  hath  forsaken  me,  having  loved  this  Pres- 
ent World."— II.  Timothy  iv.  10.  (Nov.  18, 1888.) 


CONTENTS. 


Sermon 

XIV. 


XV. 


XVI. 


XVII. 


XVIII. 


XIX. 


XX. 


Paob 

242 


The  Natural  and  the  Spiritual   . 

"  Ilowbeit  that  was  not  first  which  is  Spiritual, 
but  t!iat  which  is  Natural ;  and  afterward  that 
which  is  Spiritual."  —  I.  Corinthians  xv.  46. 
(Oct.  28,  1888.) 

The  .Stonk  of  Shechem 260 

"  And  Joshua  said  unto  all  the  people,  '  Behold, 
this  stone  shall  be  a  witness  unto  us ;  for  it  hath 
heard  all  the  words  of  the  Lord  which  He  spake 
unto  us  :  it  shall  be  therefore  a  witness  unto  you, 
lest  ye  deny  your  God.' "  —  .Joshua  xxiv.  27.  (Oct. 
6,  1878.) 

The  Nearness  of  Christ 277 

"  Ilowbeit,  we  know  this  man  whence  He  is: 
but  when  Christ  cometh,  no  man  knoweth  whence 
He  is."  — John  vii.  27.     (Nov.  17,  1889.) 

Prayer 296 

"  If  ye  abide  in  Me,  and  My  words  abide  in  you, 
ye  shall  ask  what  ye  will,  and  it  shall  be  done  unto 
you."  —  John  xv.  7.     (July  14,  1867.) 

The  Eternal  Humanity 310 

"  I  am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Beginning  and 
the  End,  the  First  and  the  Last."  — Revelation 
xxii.  13.     (June  12,  1864.) 

The  Christian  Ministry 327 

'*  And  the  Evening  and  the  Morning  were  the 
First  Day."  —  Genesis  i.  5.     (Nov.  3,  1889.) 

Foreign  Missions 346 

"  And  He  said  unto  them,  '  Go  ye  into  all  the 
World  and  Preach  the  Gospel  to  every  Creature.' " 
—  Mark  xvi.  15.     (Jan.  20,  1889.) 


The  dates  given  are  those  on  which  the  Sermons  were  first  preached. 


SERMONS. 


I. 

THE   MYSTERY   OF  INIQUITY. 

"The  mystery  of  iniquity." — 2  Thess.  ii.  7. 

In  this  season  of  Lent,  tlie  one  thought  which  we 
want  to  bring  and  keep  before  ourselves  is  the 
thought  of  our  own  sinfulness.  These  weeks  are  set 
apart  for  the  very  purpose  that  we  may  make  famil- 
iar to  ourselves  the  idea  of  human  sin,  its  sources,  its 
nature,  its  effects,  its  remedy.  We  turn  that  idea 
over  and  over,  look  at  it  on  this  side  and  on  that,  try 
to.  know  it  by  every  point  of  access,  try  to  let  it  com- 
pletely get  possession  and  control  of  us.  And  thus 
there  are  many  subjects  Avhich  are  proper  to  be 
treated  —  the  extent  of  human  sin,  its  enormity,  its 
variety,  its  tenacity,  its  sorrow,  its  penalty,  the  in- 
gratitude of  man  in  committing  it,  and  the  great  love 
of  God  in  pardoning  it — -all  these  are  fit  and  famil- 
iar topics  for  Lenten  consideration. 

In  our  text  Paul  suggests  another,  —  not  less  fit, 
though  perhaps  not  so  familiar,  —  "  The  Mystery  of 
Iniquity,"  the  mysterious  character  of  human  sin. 
Let  us  try  to  turn  one  or  two  of  the  many  sides  of 
this  subject  into  view  to-day  and  see  if  we  cannot 
get  some  idea  of  it. 


2  THE  MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY. 

What  does  he  mean,  then,  by  the  mystery  of  sin  ? 
Is  not  sin  the  one  great  present  palpable  thing  which 
everybody  understands  by  the  clear  witness  of  his 
own  experience?  But  remember  what  a  mystery  is. 
A  mystery  I  take  to  be  the  general  name  for  any 
event  whose  reality  or  fact  is  evident,  but  whose 
method  or  way  of  accomplishment  it  is  not  in  our 
power  to  understand.  Thus,  for  instance,  we  call 
the  force  of  gravitation  a  mysterious  power.  Every 
falling  apple,  every  steady  mountain,  bears  witness 
that  such  a  force  really  exists ;  but  what  it  is,  how 
it  works,  where  its  causes  and  conditions  lie,  who 
can  tell  ?  So  we  talk  about  the  mystery  of  life. 
Life  is  self-conscious.  It  testifies  itself  in  every 
living  action.  The  fact  of  life  runs  in  the  blood, 
beats  in  the  pulse,  speaks  in  the  voice,  thinks  in  the 
brain.  But  the  mystery  lies  deeper,  in  the  unfound 
methods,  in  that  long-sought  something  which  neither 
physician  nor  metaphysician  has  yet  tracked  to  its 
hiding-place,  that  unnamed  essence  in  which  the 
true  cause  of  life  resides.  And  yet  again  of  God  — 
we  speak  of  Him  as  the  great  all-embracing  Mystery. 
You  see  again,  it  is  not  the  fact  but  the  method  of 
His  existence  that  is  mysterious.  We  know  that  He 
is  Creation,  Providence ;  the  Human  Consciousness, 
the  Divine  Revelation,  —  all  tell  us  that.  How  He 
is ;  what  is  meant  by  eternal  and  uncaused  existence ; 
how  the  sacred  union  of  the  three  persons  is  bound 
into  the  single  life  of  Deity ;  what  it  is  to  be  om- 
nipotent, omniscient,  omnipresent,  —  these  are  the 
things  we  do  not  know.  It  is  our  ignorance  of  these 
that  makes  God  a  mystery  to  us.     Shall  we  take  yet 


THE  MYSTERY   OF   miQTJITY.  3 

another  ?  Look  at  death  —  that  one  great  solemn  fact, 
which  nobody  can  hide,  the  gap  in  a  household 
that  stares  itself  into  our  remembrance  day  after 
day  —  or  in  a  nobler  way,  the  certainty  of  a  won 
victory  of  a  soul  freed  from  its  earthly  suffering  and 
entered  on  its  endless  joy.  Either  way  the  fact  is 
past  our  doubting,  but  who  knows  how  it  comes  or 
what  it  means  ?  The  silver  cord  is  slowly  loosed,  or 
the  golden  bowl  is  suddenly  broken,  and  Ave  can  only 
stand  by  and  wonder  into  what  new  ways  of  life  this 
death  ushers  the  departing  soul. 

In  all  these  cases,  then,  you  see  what  we  mean  by 
a  mystery.  Some  event  whose  fact  is  evident  but 
whose  methods  and  modes  are  dark.  Now,  if  we 
apply  this  to  the  phrase  of  Paul,  the  "Mystery  of 
Iniquity,"  it  must  mean  the  same.  Iniquity  or  sin 
is  one  of  the  great  evident  patent  facts  of  the  world. 
No  man  with  his  eyes  open  doubts  that  it  exists.  But 
tha  more  we  have  to  do  with  it,  the  more  we  feel 
that  the  ways  of  its  existence  and  operation  are 
obscure.  It  is  a  subtle,  elusive,  inapprehensible 
thing,  if  we  attempt  to  grasp  all  its  movements. 
We  understand  why  in  the  first  sin  it  took  as  its 
first  typical  representation  the  figure  of  the  serpent, 
which  cheats  the  eye  with  sinuous  changes  of  place 
continually,  refuses  to  be  located,  and  while  it  leaves 
no  doubt  of  its  existence  is  seen  only  in  flashes  and 
a  wavering  indistinctness. 

My  object  to-day  is  to  exhibit  in  some  of  its 
aspects  this  mysterious  nature  of  human  sin.  Do 
not  suppose  that  I  wish  to  occupy  your  time  with 
a  merely  curious  or  speculative  study.     I   have  no 


4  THE  MYSTERY   OF    INIQUITY. 

right  to  do  that.  I  wish  to  speak  earnestly  and 
practically,  and  I  think  we  shall  find  an  abundance 
of  practical  lessons  resulting  on  all  sides  of  us  as  we 
go  on. 

1.  First,  then,  iniquity  or  sin  is  mysterious  in  its 
origin.  How  did  sin  begin  ?  It  is  the  old  question 
which  has  rung  through  all  the  philosophies  as  well 
as  all  the  theologies  and  found  no  answer.  And  see 
how  it  fulfils  our  description  of  a  mystery.  The 
fact  of  a  beginning  of  sin  is  one  of  those  which  very 
few  men  have  had  the  hardihood  to  doubt.  Not 
merely  revelation  to  those  who  received  it,  but 
even  human  reason  to  those  who  made  it  their 
teacher,  has  always  signified  that  the  wrong  was  an 
importation,  an  intrusion,  an  invasion  in  the  world. 
That  there  was  a  time  when  it  was  not,  there  was  a 
moment  when  it  began  to  be.  This  has  been  always 
one  of  the  dearest  and  most  precious  thoughts  of  men, 
one  that  they  laid  hold  of  the  most  eagerly,  one  that 
they  let  go  of  last.  And  men  have  always  seemed 
to  carry  a  certain  sort  of  proof  of  their  idea  about 
with  them  in  the  very  pictures  and  ideals  of  perfect 
goodness,  —  which  all  ages  have  treasured  and  kept 
alive.  I  suppose  there  is  no  other  way  of  explaining 
the  strange  fact  that  amid  all  the  personal  badness, 
and  social  corruption  that  is  in  the  world,  the  human 
mind  has  been  able  to  preserve  the  ideal  of  a  pure 
society  and  a  perfect  life,  to  dream  of  it,  sometimes 
to  strive  after  it,  except  by  acknowledging  the 
reality  of  an  entrance  of  iniquity  into  the  world, 
and  looking  back  to  a  time  before  that  invasion  when 
the  world  was  sinless. 


THE   MYSTERY    OP   INIQUITY.  5 

But  readily  and  widely  as  men  grant  the  fact, 
this  does  not  touch  in  the  least  the  method  of  the 
great  intrusion  of  sinfulness.  Still  the  "  Mystery  of 
Iniquity  "  remains  as  dark  as  ever.  How  the  hard 
questions  crowd  up  which  any  of  us  can  ask  and  no 
wisdom  yet  is  wise  enough  to  answer  !  If  sin  came 
in,  whence  came  it?  Nay,  what  is  it?  Is  it  an 
active  thing  forcing  itself  violently  upon  unwilling 
humanity,  or  is  it  the  new  result  of  a  fermentation 
of  the  ingredients,  the  passions,  and  powers  of  that 
humanity  itself?  If  it  came  from  without,  how  was 
it  that  a  pure  will  with  no  evil  habit  or  tendency 
could  receive  or  adopt  the  evil  of  temptation? 
Where  is  the  bridge  by  which  a  nature  can  pass 
over  from  innocence  to  guilt  ?  All  these  are  ques- 
tions without  answers,  and  in  their  doubt  and  dark- 
ness looms  up  the  great  "  Mystery  of  Iniquity." 

And  this  which  is  true  in  general  history  is  re- 
peated in  the  history  of  each  single  life.  How  does 
a  new  responsible  immortal  get  the  taint  of  sin? 
How  is  it  that  every  being  born  into  the  world, 
without  exception,  born  sinless,  gets  the  evil  habit 
into  him  and  begins  to  sin  ?  The  fact  is  there  — 
written  clear  as  daylight  whenever  man  has  lived 
and  sinned.  But  the  explanation  is  not  found 
yet.  We  talk  to  one  another  about  "original  sin," 
as  if  that  explained  it.  Well,  what  do  we  mean  by 
"  original  sin  "  ?  Not  surely  that  each  being  comes 
into  the  world  guilt}'-,  already  bearing  the  burden  of 
responsible  sin.  If  that  were  so,  every  infant  djang 
before  the  age  of  conscious  action  must  go  to  ever- 
lasting punishment,  which  horrible  theology,  I  think, 


6  THE   MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY. 

nobody  holds  to-day.  Original  sin  means  some  sort 
of  tendency  or  possibility  of  sinfulness.  I  take  it  to 
express  nothing  more  than  something  vague  and 
indefinite  —  it  does  not  say  what  —  something  in 
man  which  makes  it  certain  that  as  he  grows  up  into 
manhood  he  shall  grow  up  into  transgression ; 
and  that  you  see  is  only  the  statement  of  the  same 
"  Mystery  of  Iniquity  "  in  other  words. 

There  is  something  oppressive,  something  terrible, 
in  this  great  mysterious  presence  of  sin  right  in 
our  midst,  so  that  nothing  goes  on  save  in  its 
shadow,  —  no  state  is  formed,  no  family  grows  up,  no 
social  compact  is  organized,  no  character  matures 
without  its  blighting  mixture.  Right  in  our  midst, 
and  yet  no  voice  of  man  or  God  is  opened  to  tell  us 
how  it  came  here.  The  Gospel  does  not  tell  us. 
The  Gospel  finds  it  here,  deals  with  it,  does  not 
explain  it.  It  stands  here  shading  all  life,  tainting 
all  action,  the  great  unread,  terrible  "Mystery  of 
Iniquity." 

My  brethren,  with  such  a  shadow  on  the  world, 
how  dare  we  live  the  lives  we  do  ?  I  do  not  say  it 
ought  to  make  us  miserable,  sad,  or  gloomy.  I  do 
not  say  it  ought  to  crush  us  and  dishearten  us ;  but 
surely  it  ought  to  make  us  earnest,  to  put  into  our 
lives  something  of  that  quality,  call  it  awe,  or 
reverence,  or  solemnity,  —  the  Bible  groups  it  into 
its  great  word  "  Fear."  That  quality  which  should 
banish  mere  trifling  and  nonsense  to  the  winds.  It 
ought  to  make  us  sober  —  a  happy  soberness,  but 
yet  a  sober  happiness.  It  ought  to  make  it  dreadful 
for   us   to    think  of   the   lives  that   half   of   us    are 


THE  MYSTERY   OF  INIQUITY.  7 

living,  dancing  and  singing  and  idling  in  a  world  on 
which  so  vast  a  mystery  abides.  It  ought  to  make 
us  afraid  of  the  miserable  frivolity  that  trifles  up 
to  the  very  door  of  Lent,  —  and  then  wearies  over  its 
prayer-book  and  its  church-going  till  the  Easter  door 
shall  open  to  let  it  out  into  its  butterfly  life  again. 

2.  From  this  mystery  which  belongs  to  the  very 
presence  of  sin  on  earth,  I  pass  on  now  to  speak  of 
some  of  the  mysteries  which  belong  to  its  special 
operations.  Remember  throughout  our  definition  of 
a  mystery. 

Is  there  not  something  very  mysterious  in  the  per- 
vasiveness and  inveteracy  of  sin  as  compared  with 
goodness  ?  Look  at  it.  We  believe  in  goodness 
as  the  superior  power.  We  hold  that  wherever  they 
are  brought  to  a  fair  struggle,  goodness  as  the  su- 
perior power  must  prevail.  We  look  for  the  day 
whose  signs  we  think  we  see  already  when  "the 
might  with  the  right  and  the  truth  shall  be." 
This  is  our  creed  drawn  from  the  nature  of  the 
things  themselves.  And  all  our  observation  of  the 
larger  experience  of  the  world  proves  our  creed 
true.  The  history  of  human  life  shows  everywhere 
this  gradual  assertion  of  the  victory  of  right  over 
wrong.  Civilization  everywhere  encroaches  upon  bar- 
barism, order  on  disorder,  religion  upon  heathenism, 
purity  upon  corruption.  Slowly,  surely,  serenely, 
the  banners  of  God  everywhere,  witli  His  light  upon 
tliem,  press  forward,  and  the  dark  masses  of  God's 
enemies  fall  back  before  them.  We  believe  in  this 
steady  gain.  Truth  is  stronger  than  error,  mercy 
than    cruelty,  love    than   hate ;  and  yet    with    this 


8  THE   MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY. 

great  creed  I  think  few  things  are  more  bewildering 
than  the  way  in  which,  in  special  cases,  the  evil  is  al- 
ways seeming  to  be  more  pervasive  and  powerful 
than  the  good.  We  all  feel  as  if  as  soon  as  there  is 
one  bad  spot  in  a  man's  life  there  were  more  chance  , 
of  the  life  becoming  all  bad,  than  with  one  good 
spot  of  the  whole  life  being  filled  with  goodness.  It 
is  almost  an  instinctive  feeling.  You  take  a  poor 
miserable  reprobate,  one  of  those  men  who  seem  to 
have  no  goodness  left  in  them,  an  outcast,  an  ac- 
cepted bad  man.  Suppose  some  day  some  sign  of 
a  better  spirit  makes  itself  seen  in  him ;  his  life  is 
a  long  lie,  but  somewhere  in  it  an  impulse  of  truth 
surprises  you ;  his  life  is  black  with  impui'ity,  but 
at  some  point  a  bright  and  better  light  breaks  in. 
What  do  you  say  of  him?  Is  not  that  glimmer  of 
good  swallowed  up  and  lost  in  the  great  general  mass 
of  evil  ?  You  do  not  look  on  it  as  likely  to  come  to 
anything.  You  expect  it  to  go  out.  But  now,  sup- 
pose we  have  a  good  man's  life,  a  long,  bright  stretch 
of  goodness,  clear,  almost  without  stain ;  but  some- 
where in  it  you  discern  one  taint,  somewhere  you 
find  one  falseness  creeping  in  among  the  truth,  one 
hate  among  the  love, — at  once  you  are  distressed  and 
frightened,  at  once  you  picture  to  yourself  this  bad 
spot  spreading  till  tlie  whole  is  bad.  One  bad  spot 
seems  so  much  moi-e  likely  to  taint,  than  one  good 
spot  does  to  purify  the  whole. 

And  so  of  the  pervasive  power  of  sin  among  masses 
of  men.  We  send  one  good  man  into  a  crowd  of 
villains  and  we  vaguely  and  dimly  hope  that  he  may 
make  them  better.     We  send  one  villain  into  a  com- 


THK    MYSTERY    OF    INIQUITY.  9 

pauy  of  saints  and  begin  to  look  at  once  to  see  stains 
on  their  robes  and  tarnish  on  their  crowns.  You  send 
your  boy  to  college,  and  if  he  goes  there  pure  you 
hardly  expect  him  to  purify  the  air  about  him.  You 
only  ask,  with  trembling  lips,  of  God,  that  he  him- 
self be  not  defiled.  But  you  hear  of  3-our  neighbor's 
bad  boy  that  has  gone  there,  and  in  a  moment  you  see 
the  badness  that  there  is  in  him  spreading  itself  and 
taking  root  in  others.  I  think  we  all  can  recognize 
this  feeling.  Vice  is  a  hardy  plant.  Let  it  alone 
and  it  will  grow  on  of  itself.  Virtue  is  a  delicate 
and  fragile  thing,  and  needs  all  the  care  and  petting 
it  can  get.  Put  this  along  with  our  firm  belief  in 
the  essential  superiority  and  final  victory  of  good- 
ness, and  it  certainly  forces  on  us  a  conviction  of  the 
subtlety  and  energy  of  the  power  of  evil,  and  is 
one  of  the  most  perplexing  illustrations  of  the 
*'  Myster}^  of  Iniquity." 

-  3.  I  ask  you  again  to  notice  the  mysterious  per- 
sonalness  with  which  sin  presents  itself  as  a  tempter 
to  the  hearts  of  men.  This  is  what  we  usually 
hear  stated  as  the  doctrine  of  "besetting  sins." 
The  idea  is  that  every  nature  is  by  its  constitution 
specially  liable  to  certain  forms  of  transgression,  and 
that  opportunities  and  inducements  to  transgress  al- 
ways multiply  themselves  on  that  side  of  the  nature 
which  is  most  inclined  to  yield.  I  know  how  easy  it 
is  for  a  man  to  imagine  something  of  this  kind,  and 
to  suppose,  because  the  attacks  which  come  to  him  on 
his  weaker  side  give  him  the  most  trouble,  therefore 
there  are  the  most  of  them  ;  but  still,  I  think  we 
have  all  felt   tlie  truth  of  the  personal  malignity  of 


10  THE   MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY. 

sin  too  often  not  to  recognize  its  truth.  Why  is  it 
that  he  who  is  most  liable  to  pride,  has  such  contin- 
ual incitements  to  an  overweaning  vanity  ?  Why  is  it 
that  the  poor  inebriate  trying  to  give  up  his  drink, 
finds  the  whole  world  full  of  beckoning  fingers  and 
tempting  voices  that  keep  calling  back  again  his  dy- 
ing passions  into  life.  To  the  light  and  over-frivo- 
lous character  all  nature  shapes  itself  into  a  chorus 
and  sings  siren  songs  to  scare  incipient  thoughtful- 
ness  away.  To  the  morose  and  bitter  nature  all  life 
gathers  itself  up  gloriously  to  deepen  and  darken  the 
wicked  dreariness  of  his  existence.  We  get  the  idea 
of  a  man's  being  personally  persecuted  by  sin.  A  man 
is  proud,  and  everything  seems  to  minister  to  his 
pride.  He  is  rich,  prosperous ;  everything  goes  well 
with  him.  Some  day  he  loses  it  all.  He  is  cast 
down  into  humility  and  poverty.  What  then  ?  Does 
his  pride  forsake  him  ?  In  some  form  or  other  you 
see  the  man  still  proud  of  his  very  humility  and  pov- 
erty. His  "  besetting  sin  "  has  hunted  him  out  and 
found  him  down  in  the  depths.  It  is  like  nothing 
but  the  old  Greek  stories  of  the  imj^lacable  furies 
that  gave  their  victims  no  rest  till  they  had  chased 
them  into  their  graves.  What  one  of  us  sits  here  to- 
day and  does  not  know  his  own  besetting  sin?  Why 
is  it  that  everywhere  one  of  us  goes,  the  lips  shape 
themselves  to  lie  ;  wherever  another  goes,  the  limbs 
sink  down  into  sloth  and  self-indulgence ;  whatever 
turn  another  takes,  the  air  burns  hot  with  passion 
which  he  cannot  escape  ?  It  is  this  personality  of 
sin,  this  gradual  conviction  that  certain  sins  are  our 
sins,  set  apart,  set  down  to  us  — it  is  this  which  gives 


THE   ]VrYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY.  11 

the  sense  of  helplessness  to  our  condition.  We  get 
at  last  to  settling  down  and  shaping  our  lives  to  it, 
and  making  up  our  minds  that  there  is  no  hope  for 
us,  but  that  this  one  bad  thing  we  are  delivered  to 
do.  Consciously  or  unconsciously  we  make  for  it  a 
standard  of  responsibility  different  from  that  which 
we  have  for  all  other  acts. 

And  not  only  on  our  weakest  points,  but  at  our 
weakest  times  does  the  special  attack  always  seem  to 
come.  This  is  still  more  mysterious.  We  read  of 
Christ,  that  He  went  up  into  the  wilderness,  and 
"when  He  was  an  hungered,"  the  devil  came  to  Him. 
So  it  is  always.  The  offer  of  stones  turned  into  bread 
comes  "  when  we  are  an  hungered."  Why  is  it  that 
just  when  we  are  most  tried  in  good  works,  the  road 
smooths  itself  and  the  banks  grow  green,  and  we  are 
tempted  to  lie  down  in  slothfulness  ?  Why  is  it  that 
just  when  we  are  poorest,  and  so  find  the  readiest 
excuses  for  meanness,  the  sin  of  meanness  comes ; 
just  when  we  are  sore  with  some  insult  or  blow,  an- 
other always  comes  and  makes  us  sin  with  angry 
words ;  just  at  the  moment  of  all  moments  when 
some  disappointment  has  shaken  our  faith  in  all 
truth  and  honor,  comes  a  lie  into  our  lips  and  insists 
on  being  told  ?  It  is  very  startling  and  bewildering 
sometimes  to  find  the  chance  of  sin  occurring  just 
when  we  are  weakest  to  resist  it.  Surely  in  this 
personalness  and  timeliness  of  temptation  is  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  "Mystery  of  In- 
iquity." 

Now  take  yet  another  point  in  the  mysteriousness 
of  sin  —  its  power  of  self-disguise.     There  is  some- 


12  THE   MYSTERY    OF    INIQUITY. 

thing  encouraging  and  something  disheartening  in 
the  way  in  which  sin  is  constantly  inducing  us  to 
commit  it,  by  presenting  itself  to  us  as  something 
different  from  what  it  really  is.  It  is  disheartening, 
because  there  is  no  sin  which  people,  keeping  the 
dread  of  it  all  the  time  before  their  own  consciences, 
no  sin  so  heinous  that  people  may  not  be  brought  to 
commit  it ;  and  yet  it  is  encouraging  to  see  that 
people  do  need  to  have  vice  present  itself  to  them 
under  the  cloak  of  virtue  before  they  will  heartity 
give  up  to  it  their  allegiance.  Is  it  not  wonderful 
to  see  how  few  sins  in  this  world  are  done  flatly, 
fairly,  blankly,  as  sins  ?  We  carry  our  consciences  by 
side  attacks,  b}^  elaborate  strategies  and  artifices. 
We  almost  never  charge  up  in  the  face  of  our  sense 
of  right  and  take  it  by  assault.  It  is  a  very  rare 
thing,  I  think,  much  rarer  than  we  are  often  ready 
to  suppose,  for  a  man  to  say  to  himself,  this  thing 
is  bad,  bad  and  not  good,  certainly  and  neces- 
sarily and  nothing  but  bad,  and  yet  I  will  do  it. 
Go  and  sit  down  by  the  murderer  in  his  cell,  by  the 
traitor  in  his  camp,  stand  with  the  persecutor  before 
his  burning  victim,  look  into  the  hot  heart  of  the 
adulterer  or  the  blasphemer,  tie  the  liar  down  to 
give  an  account  of  the  disgraceful  falsehood  he  has 
uttered,  and  every  one  of  them  has  his  fair  mask  to 
spread  before  the  face  of  the  iniquity  to  which  he 
has  yielded  himself.  Covetousness  dresses  itself  in 
the  decent  robes  of  prudence,  idleness  calls  itself 
innocence,  prodigality  goes  garbed  as  generosity, 
they  all  masquerade  through  society  and  trap  the 
souls  of  men.     This  is  the  meaning  of  the  conviction 


THE  MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY.  13 

of  sin,  this  is  what  the  Gospel  does, — it  strips  the 
false  shows  off,  and  it  is  then,  when  men  see  their 
lives  as  what  they  are,  when  the  inner  nature  of  acts 
writes  out  their  true  titles  on  their  foreheads;  then 
that  that  terrible  humiliation  comes  of  which  we  hear 
the  subjects  of  the  Gospel  speak  ;  then  that  some 
strong  men  stand  and  tremble  like  children  before 
the  barrenness  and  wickedness  of  their  whole  lives, 
and  others  fall  and  press  their  faces  in  the  dust  to 
shut  out  the  reproaching  sight,  and  cry  out  before 
their  convicted  selves  their  wild  "  unclean !  un- 
clean ! " 

One  cannot  stand  before  a  crowd  of  his  fellow-men, 
and  not  think  what  would  come  to  pass  if  the  Gospel 
in  one  sudden  moment  did  its  work  for  all  of  them. 
O  we  are  self-complacent  as  we  sit  and  look  into 
one  another's  faces  here  to-day !  We  have  our  sins 
here  all  decently  labelled,  all  decently  clad.  What 
if  He  came,  the  Spirit  of  all  truth,  and  wiped  out 
every  false  name  and  wrote  up  every  true  one  !  We 
tremble  to  think  of  what  these  walls  must  see. 
We  should  not  dare  look  up  on  one  another's  shame 
bowed  down  each  with  the  supreme  shamefulness  of 
his  own.  We  should  leap  at  once  into  a  self-abhor- 
rence like  to  Job's.  This  would  turn  to  a  Lenten 
afternoon  then  indeed.  "  Out  of  the  deep "  we 
should  cry  unto  God  together.  Out  of  the  deep  of 
our  honest  humiliation !  Of  all  the  mysteries  of 
iniquity  is  there  any  stranger,  more  bewildering,  than 
this  —  this  power  of  self-disguise  ?  There  is  no  sin 
that  may  not  be  made  to  look  like  holiness,  no  holi- 
ness that  may  not  be  made  the  cloak  of  a  sin.     What 


14  THE   MYSTERY   OF   INIQUITY. 

does  it  mean  ?  Is  there  a  vice  for  every  virtue,  a 
shadow  for  every  sunlight  ?  Is  there  an  iniquity  cut 
into  tlie  shape  and  painted  in  the  hue  of  every  good- 
ness ;  and  is  the  power  of  substituting  the  evil  for  the 
good  intrusted  to  the  cunning  and  unscrupulous 
hands  of  some  infernal  malice  ?  What  a  strange  as- 
sociation and  correspondence  between  the  good  and 
evil  it  suggests  !  Is  it  that  the  arch-fiend,  the  fallen 
angel,  took  with  him  when  he  fell  out  of  the  skies 
the  patterns  of  the  heavenly  glory,  and  makes  the 
curses  that  he  sends  upon  the  earth  after  their 
blessed  shapes?  However  it  may  come,  there  is 
something  fearful  in  having  to  live  in  the  distrustful- 
ness,  and  confusion,  and  perplexity  that  grows  out  of 
this  strange  Mystery  of  Iniquity. 

These,  then,  I  have  specified  as  some  of  the  mys- 
teries in  the  character  and  operations  of  human  sin ; 
some  of  the  phenomena  whose  reality  we  are  com- 
pelled to  recognize,  but  whose  methods  and  means  it 
is  totally  out  of  our  power  to  understand.  If  we 
tried  to  generalize  them,  and  find  out  thus  something 
of  the  real  nature  of  sinfulness,  I  do  not  think  it 
would  be  hard  to  read  one  general  character  in  all 
these  various  workings.  They  all  show  that  wonder- 
ful activity,  mobility,  facility,  malignity,  which  we 
always  conceive  of  as  belonging  only  to  a  person- 
ality. We  have  almost  been  driven  to  a  personal 
phraseology  in  speaking  of  them.  When  we  see 
some  force  working  its  way  with  restless  energy 
against  the  sluggishness  of  higher  forces,  choosing  its 
persons  and  points  of  attack,  choosing  its  times  of 
action  with  some  marvellous  discrimination,  putting 


THE    MYSTERY    OF    INIQUITY.  15 

on,  when  need  demands  it,  the  cloak  and  mask  of  a 
diviner  power,  malignantly,  dexterously,  with  such 
strange  choice  and  ingenuity  doing  its  work,  what 
better  conception  can  we  form  of  it  than  that  which 
the  sublime  language  of  the  Scripture  gives  us  of  a 
personal  evil,  a  Satan,  a  bad  spirit  set  to  the  endless 
work  of  thwarting  God  and  ruining  the  hope  of  man ! 
Reason  may  find  what  difficulties  she  will  in  the  doc- 
trine of  a  i^ersonal  Satan,  but  she  has  yet  to  harmo- 
nize and  arrange,  under  any  other  idea,  the  phenom- 
ena of  human  sin.  Till  she  does  this,  there  stands 
forth  this  personal  "  Mystery  of  Iniquity,"  which 
Paul,  with  a  sublime  realism,  sees  working  his  devil- 
ish schemes  in  personal  freedom  and  power  among 
the  sons  of  men. 

We  have  spoken  thus  of  the  mysteriousness  of  sin 
in  its  origin  and  operations.  It  would  be  a  cruel,  a 
false,  and  an  unchristian  sermon  if  I  closed  without 
telling  you  of  the  diviner  mystery  in  which  human 
iniquity  finds  its  cure.  The  first  thought  round 
which  the  grand  wonder  of  the  atonement  grows 
into  shape  is  this  thought  of  sin  as  a  real  live  thing 
standing  forth  to  be  fought  with,  to  be  conquered, 
to  be  killed.  Not  of  a  mere  moral  weakness  to 
be  strengthened,  or  an  intellectual  emptiness  to  be 
filled,  but  of  an  enmity  to  be  slain,  a  giant  to  be  sub- 
dued. To  meet  that  enmity,  to  slay  that  giant, 
Christ  comes  forth  with  his  wonderful  nature.  He 
undertakes  a  distinct  and  dreadful  struggle.  The 
sublime  conflict  goes  on  between  Christ  and  Satan, 
in  a  region  apart  from,  above,  and  separate  from 
man.      We    see   its   outward    manifestation   in    the 


16  THE   MYSTEKY   OF   INIQUITY. 

agony  of  the  cross.  We  see,  but  do  not  comprehend 
even  that.  All  the  deeper  battle  goes  on  out  of  our 
sight.  We  know  not  how  it  fares  till  the  word  of 
God  comes  to  tell  us  that  the  victory  is  won  by  our  Re- 
deemer, and  that  Satan  is  trodden  into  death  by  the 
dying  Christ.  Of  all  the  Mystery  of  Iniquity,  where 
is  the  Mystery  like  this  ?  You  see  how  true  a  mys- 
tery it  is.  Nothing  but  the  fact  we  know.  That  we 
know  perfectly.  That  shining,  splendid  fact,  that 
gracious,  glorious  fact  —  the  fact  of  the  Lord's  vic- 
tory and  of  Satan's  fall  —  stands  forth  so  clear  that 
none  can  doubt  it.  It  takes  its  place  as  the  one  cer- 
tain, central  fact  of  hope.  By  it  the  living  live,  by 
it  the  dying  die ;  in  it  the  glorified  rejoice  forever. 
But  who  shall  go  behind  the  fact,  and  tell  its 
method?  Who  shall  say  how,  wh}^,  where,  that  all- 
availing  victory  was  won  ?  Only  the  divine  and 
human  Christ  met  the  power  of  sin  and  conquered 
it ;  and  every  human  being  in  that  triumph  of  the 
one  great  humanity  stood  possibly  victor  over  his 
mighty  and  malicious  foe. 

O  wondrous  mystery !  Who  asks  to  know  the 
way?  Who  does  not  take  the  glorious  truth  and 
fasten  desperate  hands  upon  it,  and  draw  himself  up 
by  it  into  hope  ?  Who  will  not  stand  content  and 
let  the  clouds  cover  the  awful  mystery  of  his  great 
Master's  struggle,  so  long  as  out  of  the  clouds  he 
hears  the  assuring  voice  of  God :  "  This  is  my  be- 
loved Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased.  Whosoever 
cometh  unto  me  by  him  shall  not  perish,  but  shall 
have  everlasting  life  "  ? 

The  Mystery  of  Iniquity  !     This  is  the  lesson  of 


THK    MYSTKIIY    OF    INIQUITY.  17 

all  that  we  have  said  to-day,  —  that  we  are  living  in 
the  midst  of  mysterious  forces  leagued  against  our 
souls,  —  that  our  enemy  is  mysterious,  is  superhu- 
man. Mysterious  and  superhuman,  then,  must  be 
our  safety  and  defence.  Our  foe  is  a  spirit.  A 
higher  spirit,  then,  even  the  Hcly  Spirit  of  God,  must 
be  our  champion.  "  We  wrestle  not  against  flesh 
and  blood,  but  against  principalities,  against  powers, 
against  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this  world, 
against  spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places."  Where- 
fore we  must  take  unto  ourselves  the  whole  armor 
of  God.  Be  strong  in  the  Lord,  and  in  the  power  of 
His  might.  Put  on  the  whole  armor  of  God,  that  we 
may  be  able  to  stand  against  the  wiles  of  the  devil, 
and  having  done  all,  to  stand. 


n. 

THE   VALLEY   OF   BACA. 

"Who  passing  through  the  valley  of  Baca  make  it  a  well;  the 
rain  also  filleth  the  pools."  —  Psalms  Ixxxiv.  6. 

The  prayer-book  version  of  these  words,  you  will 
remember,  is  a  little  different :  "  Who  going  through 
the  vale  of  misery  use  it  for  a  well ;  and  the  pools 
are  filled  with  water."  Let  us  try  to  keep  both 
versions  in  mind  while  we  are  speaking  of  it. 

The  verse  gathers  its  beauty  from  the  circum- 
stances of  the  Psalm.  It  is  drawn  out  of  the  richness 
of  that  picture-land  of  Palestine.  The  more  we 
read  the  Psalms,  and  indeed  all  the  Bible,  we  are 
imi:)ressed  with  the  remarkable  value  which  belongs 
to  the  Holy  Land  as  representing  in  a  continual  map 
or  picture  not  merely  the  localities  of  certain  historical 
events,  but  also  by  a  higher  association  the  geography 
of  the  spiritual  life  of  man  and  the  relations  of  spirit- 
ual truths  to  one  another.  The  sacred  names  have 
passed  from  being  merely  the  titles  of  hills  and  rivers 
and  cities,  and  belong  to  principles  and  moral  verities. 
In  the  world's  great  heart  there  will  forever  be  a 
holy  land  besides  that  to  which  pilgrims  travel  half- 
way round  the  globe.  Though  the  historic  land 
which  lies  between  the  Mediterranean  sea  and  the 
Asiatic  deserts  should  be  blotted  from  the  surface  of 


THE  VALLEY   OF   BACA.  19 

the  earth  to-morrow;  though  some  strange  miracle 
should  roll  the  whole  rough  surface  of  the  country 
smooth,  and  mix  in  indistinguishable  confusion  hill 
and  valley,  upland  and  river-bed,  still  there  would  be 
eternally  a  holy  land.  Still  all  over  the  world,  where- 
ever  sacred  associations  had  transfigured  the  old 
names,  the  Jordan  would  roll  down  its  rocky  bed 
to  the  Dead  sea;  still  the  hills  would  stand  about 
Jerusalem ;  still  the  desert  would  open  between 
Judea  and  Galilee ;  still  Egypt  must  mean  cap- 
tivity, and  the  Red  sea  deliverance,  and  Gilgal  provi- 
dence, and  Bethany  domestic  piety,  and  Calvary 
redeeming  love,  —  although  the  visible  places  to 
which  those  names  belong  should  cease  to  be  forever. 
We  little  know  how  much  we  owe  to  this  eternal 
picture  drawn  in  the  hearts  of  men,  this  mapped-out 
Palestine  of  the  inner  life. 

Our  text  is  one  of  the  passages  which  have  con- 
tributed to  draw  this  picture.  "  Who  passing 
through  the  vale  of  Baca  use  it  for  a  well."  Stu- 
dents have  not  been  able  to  identify  and  locate  the 
valley  Baca,  but  it  evidently  refers  either  generally 
or  specially  to  those  difficult  ravines  which  the 
people  had  to  cross  in  coming  up  to  Jerusalem  to 
the  feasts.  The  Psalm  was  probably  written  by 
David  at  some  time  when  he  was  kept  in  exile  and 
could  not  go  up  to  Jerusalem.  It  is  the  yearning  of 
a  loving  and  devoted  heart  for  the  privilege  of 
worship.  "  O  how  amiable  are  thy  dwellings,  thou 
Lord  of  hosts.  My  soul  hath  a  desire  and  longing 
to  enter  into  the  courts  of  the  Lord ;  my  heart  and 
my  flesh  rejoice  in  the  living  God.     Yea,  the  sparrow 


20  THE    VALLEY    OF    P.AOA. 

hath  found  her  an  house  and  the  swallow  a  nest 
where  she  may  lay  her  young,  even  thy  altars,  O 
Lord  of  hosts,  my  King  and  my  God."  Then  mount- 
ing up  to  the  height  of  his  sorrow  (that  height  from 
which  so  often  the  best  and  widest  visions  come  to 
men)  a  vision  comes  to  him.  He  sees  the  multitude, 
whom  he  may  not  join,  going  up  to  worship.  He 
watches  their  winding  line  from  hill  to  hill  as  they 
draw  nearer  to  Jerusalem.  "  Blessed  is  the  man  in 
whose  heart  are  thy  ways,  who  going  through  the 
vale  of  misery  use  it  for  a  well;  and  the  pools  are 
filled  with  water.  They  will  go  from  strength  to 
strength,"  he  cries,  exulting  in  their  progress,  "  and 
unto  the  God  of  gods  appeareth  every  one  of  them 
in  Zion."  Then  he  falls  back  upon  his  own  need, 
"  O  Lord  God  of  hosts,  hear  my  prayer,  hearken,  O 
God  of  Jacob.  I  had  rather  be  a  door-keeper  in  the 
house  of  my  God  than  to  dwell  in  the  tents  of  un- 
godliness." 

The  lesson  of  the  vale  of  Baca,  the  vale  of  misery, 
evidently  is,  the  turning  of  sorrow  into  joy.  Let 
us  try  to  read  the  parable  and  understand  it. 
Notice,  then,  it  is  the  turning  of  sorrow  into  joy; 
the  turning  into,  not  merely  the  supplanting,  the 
succeeding  of  sorrow  by  joy.  There  are  two  theories 
about  this  thing  :  One  we  may  call  the  theory 
of  compensation,  the  other  the  theory  of  transfor- 
mation. The  compensation  theory  is  the  common- 
est, the  one  most  easily  and  so  most  generally 
understood.  Even  Christians  are  found  continually 
confusing  it  with  and  so  substituting  it  for  the  higher 
and  better  truth.     Its  idea  is  that  the  Avorld  is  full  of 


THE    VALLEY   OF    BACA.  21 

evil  and  discomfort,  and  that  discomfort  is  to  be  borne 
only  by  the  assurance  that  it  is  not  universal  or  per- 
petual, that  it  is  varied  and  mixed  up  with  pleasure, 
and  that  if  we  can  only  set  our  lips  tight  and  walk  on 
over  the  sorrow  we  must  come  to  the  happiness  by 
and  by.  We  are  told  that  if  it  storms  to-day  the  sun 
will  be  out  to-morrow ;  if  this  week's  speculation 
fails,  the  market  is  still  open  and  to-morrow's  invest- 
ment or  the  next  day's  or  the  next  day's  may  suc- 
ceed ;  if  our  country  is  down  in  the  depths  of 
trial,  another  somewhere  else  is  sunning  itself  on  the 
summit  of  success.  There  is  this  poise  and  balance 
and  make-up  all  through  life.  This  is  a  favorite  doc- 
trine of  our  philosophy.  I  do  not  find  it  anywhere 
more  strikingly  stated  than  in  these  words  of  Emer- 
son :  "  Polarity,  or  action  and  reaction,"  he  declares, 
"  we  meet  in  every  part  of  nature,  in  darkness  and 
light  ;  in  heat  and  cold ;  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
waters ;  in  male  and  female ;  in  the  inspiration  and 
expiration  of  plants  and  animals ;  in  the  systole 
and  diastole  of  the  heart ;  in  the  undulations  of 
fluids  and  of  sound;  in  the  centrifugal  and  centrip- 
etal gravity  ;  in  electricity,  galvanism,  and  chemi- 
cal affinity.  If  the  south  attracts,  the  north  repels. 
To  empty  here  you  must  condense  there.  An  inevi- 
table dualism  bisects  nature  so  that  each  thing  is  a 
half,  and  suggests  another  thing  to  make  it  whole  ; 
as,  spirit,  matter  ;  man,  woman ;  odd,  even ;  subjective, 
objective  ;  in,  out ;  upper,  under ;  motion,  rest ;  yea, 
nay."  This  endless  up  and  down  is  the  law  which 
this  philosophy  assumes  to  be  the  great  consoler. 
And  far-sighted  fnith,  hunted  and  tried  by  suffer- 


22  THE   VALLEY   OP    BACA. 

ing,  carries  this  philosophy  out  far  beyond  the  limits 
of  this  world.  To  how  many  Christians  Heaven  and 
the  eternal  happiness  present  themselves  under  the 
guise  of  this  comj^ensation  theory.  This  world  is  the 
great  down.  The  next  world  is  to  be  the  great  up 
which  is  to  make  it  good.  The  bad  prosper  here,  the 
good  prosper  there.  The  Christian  suffers  now  to  be 
rewarded  then.  This  world  is  miserable,  we  must 
wait  for  our  happiness,  and  struggle  on  with  tight  lips 
and  torn  feet  to  find  it  in  the  next.  The  deeper  the 
misery,  the  more  complete  the  future  joy.  It  would 
be  easy  to  point  out  passages  in  Scripture  which  seem 
to  confirm  this  doctrine ;  passages  in  which  the  su- 
perior bliss  of  the  perfect  life  casts  the  miniature  ex- 
periences of  this  state  of  being  into  a  darkened  shade  ; 
but  he  who  accepts  it  as  the  general  rule  of  existence 
has  to  do  it  against  the  general  tone  of  the  Bible  and 
the  general  verdict  of  experience,  both  of  which 
declare  the  possibility  of  happiness  this  side  of  the 
grave.  It  is  the  idea  under  whose  strange  tyranny 
some  very  earnest  and  conscientious  souls  have  been 
made  morbidly  miserable  because,  forsooth,  they 
could  not  help  being  happy.  This  would  be  the 
idea  under  which  the  pilgrim  through  the  vale  of 
Baca  would  not  turn  it  into  a  well,  but  only  be  kept 
up  through  it  by  far-off  visions  of  the  waters  of  sal- 
vation which,  when  he  got  to  Jerusalem,  he  should 
find  flowing  out  of  the  mount  of  God.  It  Avould 
make  earth  not  a  foretaste,  an  earnest,  but  only  a  dis- 
cipline of  Heaven.  Whatever  truth  there  may  be  in 
it,  it  evidently  is  not  the  whole  or  the  best  truth. 
Such  a  faith,  with  all  honor  to  its  exaltedness    and 


THE  VALLEY  OF   BACA.  23 

nobleness,  be  it  said,  resembles  that  over  far-sighted- 
ness which  is  a  disease,  not  because  it  sees  things  afar 
(iff,  but  because  it  sees  only  things  afar  off  and  is 
blind  to  the  beauties  and  helps  that  lie  about  its  feet. 

Souls  of  less  intense  faith,  who  cannot  carry  the 
doctrine  of  compensation  into  the  next  life,  keep  it 
and  try  to  use  it  in  this.  Nothing  is  more  sad,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  than  the  way  in  which  we  comfort  our- 
selves and  one  another  for  our  sorrows,  by  vague, 
unrealized  promises  that  sorrow  cannot  last  forever. 

We  conceive  of  life  as  a  great  swinging  sphere 
which  must  forever  run  a  vast  orbit,  doomed  to  per- 
petual change,  and  so  sure  by  and  by  to  sweep  into 
the  sunlight,  if  A\e  can  only  keep  alive  and  wait.  It 
is  a  forlorn  and  miserable  comfort.  It  loses  all  the 
certainty  and  personal  graciousness  of  Christianity. 
There  is  no  piety  about  it.  No  man  can  get  into 
the  habit  of  thus  comforting  himself  every  day  and 
seeming  to  be  satisfied  with  this  comfort,  and  yet 
keep  a  real  faith  in  a  real,  constant,  unchanging,  in- 
finite, good  God  ;  and  yet  how  common  it  is  and  how 
pious  we  count  it.  We  sing  it  into  songs  that  sound 
almost  religious,  and  feel  as  if  we  were  comforted  and 
resigned  when  their  barren  words  fall  on  us. 

"Be  still,  sad  heart,  and  cease  repining, 
Behind  the  clouds  is  the  sun  still  shining. 
Thy  fate  is  the  common  fate  of  all. 
Into  each  life  some  rain  must  fall. 
Some  days  must  be  dark  and  dreary." 

That  means,  (if  it  be  not  going  too  far  to  seek  a 
meaning  in  what  is  perhaps  meant  for  mere  sentimen- 


24  THE   VALLEY    OF    BACA. 

tality,)  that  there  is  nothing  to  do  on  rainy  days  but 
to  sit  still  and  be  drenched  till  it  clears  up.  It  is  the 
theory  of  compensation.  There  is  so  much  rain  to 
fall,  and  if  it  did  not  fall  to-day  it  would  to-morrow ; 
having  fallen  to-day,  to-morrow  we  shall  have  the 
sun.  There  is  so  much  suffering  to  suffer.  If  we 
get  through  with  it  this  year,  the  more  certainly  next 
year  will  rise  clear.  I  presume  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  that  is  true  in  physics,  it  certainly  is 
false  in  morals. 

Nor  can  this  barren  consolation  ever  give  anything 
that  is  worthy  to  be  called  patience  or  resignation. 
Patience  and  resignation  are  both  calm  and  cheer- 
ful.  This  will  be  either  the  dogged  and  sullen  yield- 
ing of  a  brute  to  a  burden  he  cannot  escape  (losing 
cheerfulness),  or  else  the  reckless  excitement  of  a 
gambler  kept  alive  by  the  perpetual  and  unreliable 
alternation,  losing  calmness.  These  travellers  through 
the  vale  of  Baca  have  not  even  the  distant  vision  of 
the  holy  city  to  inspire  them.  They  can  only  plod 
along  the  dusty  way  in  the  vague  hope  that  some 
oasis  will  apj)ear  where  they  can  get  a  shadow  and 
a  drink.  Such  is  the  comfortless  comfort  that  we 
give  and  take. 

This  is  the  theory  of  compensations.  Now  see 
how  different  it  is  from  this  other  theory  of  transfor- 
mations. David's  pilgrims  going  through  the  vale  of 
misery  "  use  it "  for  a  well.  They  were  looking  for- 
ward to  Jerusalem.  Their  hearts  leaped,  as  every 
traveller's  must  when  any  greener  spot  promised 
them  a  richer  resting-place ;  but  their  life  was  not 
one  altogether  of  the  future,  not  kept  distressed  and 


THE   VALLEY   OF  BACA.  25 

anxious  with  uneasy  alternations.  They  made  the 
vale  itself  a  well.  It  was  not  simply  a  sorrow  that 
Avas  succeeded  by  joy,  not  merely  a  peace  promised 
and  looked  for  and  waited  for,  it  was  a  peace  found. 
When  they  grew  thirsty  they  looked,  not  merely  far- 
tlier  on  into  the  heart  of  the  future,  but  deeper  down 
into  the  bosom  of  the  present. 

It  seems  to  me  the  very  drawing  of  this  jjicture 
must  describe  to  many  a  soul  its  own  unspoken  need, 
and  make  it  recognize  it.  "  Yes,  that  is  what  I  want. 
Heaven  is  glorious,  but  it  is  far  away.  To-morrow 
may  be  all  steeped  in  sunshine  ;  but  meanwhile  to- 
day is  dark.  There  surely  must  be  something  better 
to  do  than  to  sit  down  and  wait.  What  is  it  ?  "  We 
all  feel  that  a  religion  which  lives  onl}^  on  the  future, 
dwells  only  in  the  future,  is  not  a  whole,  cannot  be  a 
wholly  efficient  faith.  What  the  world  needs  is  pres- 
ent work,  and  what  all  men  need  are  present  work- 
ing conditions,  a  present  life.  Hope  is  a  splendid 
power,  but  I  can  hope  fully,  because  I  can  hope  in- 
telligently, only  as  I  already  taste  some  intimation 
of  the  thing  I  hope  for.  I  can  strive  after  the 
streams  of  Zion  only  as  I  strengthen  myself  out  of 
the  wells  of  Baca. 

If  we  look,  then,  to  see  if  this  doctrine  of  transfor- 
mation be  possible,  it  starts  out  of  that  word  "  use." 
Things  are  what  they  are  used  for.  So  it  is  all  over 
nature.  There  stands  a  tree  in  the  forest.  What  is 
it  —  a  tree  ?  Yes,  but  a  tree  only  as  material.  It  is, 
in  possibility,  countless  things.  What  it  shall  be,  in 
reality,  depends  upon  the  superior  will  that  uses  it. 
The  savage  comes  with  his  use,  and  the  tree  is  a 


26  THE  VALLEY   OF   BACA. 

canoe  and  floats  upon  the  river.  The  builder  comes 
with  his  need,  and  the  tree  is  a  wall  of  planks  and 
shields  a  house.  The  physician  comes  with  his  use, 
and  the  tree-bark  becomes  a  medicine  and  cures  the 
sick.  The  farmer  comes  with  his  use,  and  the  tree 
turns  into  a  roaring  fire  to  keep  the  winter  out  at  his 
door.  So  of  all  things.  The  artist  uses  a  stone, 
and  it  is  a  statue  ;  the  mason  uses  a  stone,  and  it  is  a 
doorstep.  And  beyond  mere  nature.  See  how  we  use 
men.  We  are  each  other's  raw  material.  I  make  you 
up  in  some  shape  into  my  life,  and  you  in  some  way 
make  me  up  into  yours.  But  what  man  is  of  so 
fixed  a  character  that  he  can  be  made  up  only  into 
one  invariable  thing  ?  Each  man  makes  of  his 
neighbor  that  for  which  he  uses  him.  Why  is  it  that 
two  men  both  know  and  use  one  other  man  of  rich 
and  gracious  nature,  and  one  gathers  and  makes 
out  of  him  nothing  but  envy,  and  jealousy,  and  dis- 
content, while  the  other  shapes  into  his  own  life  a 
largeness,  and  sweetness,  and  fineness,  like  that  with 
which  he  has  to  deal?  Why,  except  that  the  de- 
termining power  lies  finally,  not  in  the  one  identical 
character  of  the  man  who  is  used,  but  in  the  two  dif- 
ferent natures  of  the  men  who  use  him  ?  So  of  all  in- 
fluences and  motives.  The  same  educations  wall  and 
press  upon  two  lives.  One  rises  on  them  into  great- 
ness, the  other  drags  them  down  upon  it  and  is 
crushed  beneath  them  into  ruin.  So,  go  to  Heaven. 
The  same  eternal  glory  feeds  two  heavenly  spirits ; 
the  same  great  throne  looks  down  in  loving  author- 
ity on  both.  They  tread  together  the  same  glassy 
streets;  they  wait  together  for  the  same  far-reaching 


THE   VALLEY   OP   BACA.  27 

messages ;  they  bend  together,  looking  down  into  a 
wisdom  they  both  crave  to  fathom.  Why  is  it  that 
Gabriel  stands  unstained  out  of  all  the  glory,  gather- 
ing strength  and  grace,  while  his  brother  Lucifer  falls 
from  his  side,  full  of  his  hate,  and  treason,  and  re- 
venge ?  We  need  not  go  to  angels.  How  is  it  that 
men  use  God  and  make  of  him  such  different  tilings 
grow  by  their  use  of  him  to  saints  or  devils  ?  How  is 
it  that  the  Pharisee  and  Publican  came  down  the 
same  temple  steps,  one  cold,  and  proud,  and  bitter, 
and  the  other  with  his  heart  full  of  tenderness,  and 
gratitude,  and  humblest  charity? 

As  the  world  goes  on  and  man  becomes  a  more 
complete  being,  the  truth  that  comes  out  more  and 
more  must  be  this  of  the  regal  importance  of  the 
using  moral  force.  Man  the  savage  is  ruled  by  things, 
—  rivers,  hills,  forests,  —  they  make  of  him  what 
their  own  tendencies  suggest ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
man  the  citizen,  man  civilized,  rules  things,  makes  of 
them  what  he  pleases.  Man  the  child  is  obedient 
and  plastic  ;  man  the  man  is  authoritative  and  de- 
cisive. Surely  there  is  no  picture  in  history  so  strik- 
ing and  sublime  as  that  which  is  the  one  picture  of  all 
history  :  the  soul  of  man  which  seemed  at  first  so  in- 
significant, so  weak  a  thing  among  all  these  stupen- 
dous things  and  forces,  slowly,  surely,  going  up  into  its 
own  place,  taking  its  stand  in  the  very  central  midst 
of  all  of  them,  moving  them  all,  making  them  all  be 
what  it  will,  deciding  their  nature  by  their  use. 

Now,  I  said  that  in  this  truth  lies  the  key  to  the 
difference  between  the  doctrine  of  compensations 
and  the  doctrine  of  transformations.     The  mere  com- 


28  THE   VALLEY   OF   BACA. 

pensatiou  theory  forgets  this  regal  position  of  the 
human  life.  It  puts  humanity  in  the  power  of 
things.  Man  must  be  carried  where  things  carry 
him,  and  trust  to  their  continual  changes  to  float  him 
off  to-morrow,  if  they  ground  him  perchance  to-day. 
"Nay,"  says  the  Christain  doctrine  of  transformations, 
"  things  are  in  the  power  of  man  ;  as  he  uses  them  so 
they  are."  As  God  said  to  Adam  about  the  beasts, 
"  Whatsoever  thou  callest  each,  that  is  his  name." 
In  him,  the  user,  rests  the  real  nature  of  the  things 
he  uses.  They  have  no  invariable  fixed  nature  apart 
from  him. 

Now,  let  this  great  user  man,  this  one  moral  force, 
be  called  upon  to  go  down  into  the  valley  of  Baca, 
into  the  vale  of  misery.  He  finds  there  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  suffering,  poverty,  sickness,  bereave- 
ment, sin  itself ;  what  then,  these  are  things  and  he 
is  man.  They  are  what  he  is.  Let  him  rule  them, 
not  be  ruled  by  them.  Let  him  take  down  there  a 
religious,  trustful  nature,  a  pious,  cheerful  heart,  and 
there  is  more  promised  than  just  that  his  cheerful 
piety  shall  be  able  to  support  him  through ;  he  shall 
exercise  his  human  right  of  ruling  and  of  using 
these,  and  his  cheerful,  trustful  heart  shall  come  out 
with  a  more  perfect  joy  and  a  more  certain  faith  than 
he  had  carried  in.  He  shall  not  come  out  half-dead 
with  thirst,  just  able  to  drag  himself  up  to  the  foun- 
tain at  the  end,  but  it  shall  be  as  David  so  beautifully 
says,  "  He  shall  drink  of  the  brook  in  the  way,  there- 
fore shall  he  lift  up  his  head." 

This,  then,  is  the  Christian  economy  of  suffering ; 
this  is  the  hijxh  theory  of  transmutation.     In  a  world 


THE   VALLEY   OF   BACA.  29 

full  of  sorrow  and  distress  how  noble,  how  benig- 
nant an  economy  it  is  !  Our  human  instinct  craves 
something  like  it.  We  cannot  think  complacently 
of  this  life  or  any  part  of  this  life  as  something  just 
to  be  endured,  to  be  got  through  with,  as  a  prelimi- 
nary to  some  unknown  happiness  in  store  beyond. 
We  long  for  a  present  religion,  a  present  strength,  a 
present  joy,  a  present  God,  and  we  find  them  all,  not 
in  any  weak  ignoring  of  the  misery  of  life,  but  in  the 
way  in  which  that  misery  may  become  instinct  with 
happiness,  by  the  sublime  mercy  of  "  the  vale  of 
Baca." 

If  we  go  on,  then,  a  little  farther  to  try  to  find 
out  something  about  the  methods  of  this  economy  of 
transformation,  how  it  is  that  suffering  is  not  merely 
succeeded  by  but  turned  into  joy,  I  suppose  the 
one  great  answer  that  includes  all  others  must  be 
this :  that  suffering  contains  the  elements  of  the 
highest  happiness  because  it  involves  the  condition 
of  weakness,  of  helplessness,  of  dependence.  If  the 
condition  for  which  man  was  made  was  a  religious 
condition,  that  is  to  say  a  related,  a  bound  up,  a  de- 
pendent condition,  then  the  highest  human  happiness 
must  always  come  with  the  most  complete  con- 
formity to  that  first  idea  of  human  life.  If  depend- 
ence, then,  be  happiness,  independence,  (which  if  you 
take  the  word  apart  means  just  the  same  as  irrelig- 
ion,)  independence  of  God,  self-sufficiency,  must  be 
unhappiness.  And  then  since  suffering  in  all  its 
various  departments  is  the  breaking  up  of  self-suffi- 
ciency, of  self-confidence,  is  it  not  evident  at  once 
that  rightly  used  it  may  be  the  setting  free  of  the 


30  THE  VALLEY  OF  BACA. 

human  soul  from  an  unnatural  and  forced  condition, 
into  its  natural,  regular,  intended,  and  so  happiest 
life  ?  It  is  simply  the  conviction  of  weakness  in  one's 
self  letting  a  man  free  to  return  to  the  strength  in 
which  he  belongs.  It  matters  not  what  the  weakness 
be;  whether  the  breaking  of  a  leg,  so  that  the  man 
who  walked  and  earned  his  bread  yesterday  has  to  lie 
still  and  be  fed  to-day.  Or  the  death  of  a  friend,  so 
that  he  who  used  to  lean  on  a  strong  shoulder  as  he 
walked  feels  for  it  now  in  vain.  Or  the  disproving 
of  a  favorite  proposition,  so  that  where  we  used  to 
tread  firm  on  what  we  thought  was  certainty,  we  now 
go  cautiously  and  tiptoe  over  doubt.  Anything  in 
body,  brain,  or  heart  that  gets  that  idea  of  insuffi- 
ciency home  to  us,  may  set  us  to  digging  beneath  the 
self-surface  of  our  vale  of  misery  to  find  the  God 
below  for  whom  the  thirsty  soul  was   made. 

There  is  something  very  beautiful  to  me  in  the 
truth  that  suffering,  rightly  used,  is  not  a  cramping, 
binding,  restricting  of  the  human  soul,  but  a  setting 
of  it  free.  It  is  not  a  violation  of  the  natural  order, 
it  is  only  a  more  or  less  violent  breaking  open  of 
some  abnormal  state  that  the  natural  order  may  be 
resumed.  It  is  the  opening  of  a  cage  door.  It  is  the 
breaking  in  of  a  prison  wall.  This  is  the  thought  of 
those  fine  old  lines  of  an  early  English  poet : 

♦'  The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  decayed, 
Lets  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  time  has  made. 
Stronger  by  weakness,  wiser  men  become 
As  they  draw  near  to  their  eternal  home." 

Oh,  how  many  battered  cottages  have  thus  let 
in    the   lisfht !     How  manv   broken   bodies  have  set 


THE  VALLEY   OF  BACA.  31 

their  souls  free,  and  how  manj^  shattered  homes 
have  let  the  men  and  women  who  sat  in  darkness 
in  them  see  the  great  light  of  a  present  God ! 
"  Stronger  by  weakness  !  "  "  Who  passing  through 
the  vale  of  misery  use  it  for  a  well." 

We  have  spoken  thus  of  irresponsible  suffering 
only;  but  in  a  far  nobler  way  it  is  true  of  the  re- 
sponsible suffering  which  comes  of  sin.  This  is 
the  hardest  to  believe ;  but  yet,  my  dear  friends, 
this  is  what  we  need  to  believe  most  of  all.  Be- 
yond all  suffering  which  comes  by  natural  dispen- 
sation or  by  human  weakness  there  is  another 
which  exceeds  them  all.  A  man  loses  his  friend 
and  he  is  sorry,  he  loses  his  property  and  he  is 
crushed,  he  loses  his  health  and  he  almost  gives 
up ;  but  there  is  a  yet  untasted  woe  of  which 
that  man  knows  nothing  yet.  With  all  his  wading 
through  deep  waters,  there  is  a  suffering  in  which 
he  has  not  yet  dipped  his  foot.  Let  that  same  man 
find  himself  a  sinner ;  let  him  wake  up  and  see 
how  his  sin  has  set  him  far  away  from  God ;  let 
him  feel  how  antagonistic  his  whole  life  is  to  holi- 
ness ;  let  him  stand  guilty,  guilty,  without  a 
plea,  without  a  hope,  just  with  his  stained  and 
frightened  soul  naked  before  the  eye  of  God, 
and  then  in  the  conviction  of  sin,  then  he  has 
found  what  suffering  is  —  sorrow  !  The  other  sor- 
rows of  his  life  all  fade  back  out  of  sight  and  this 
is  left  alone.  He  walks  the  valley  of  his  misery 
and  all  is  dark.  And  can  this  valley  too  break 
forth  in  wells  ?  Can  these  dry  pools  be  filled  with 
water?      Tell   me,    O    Christians,    you  who    out    of 


32  THE   VALLF.Y   OF    BACA. 

the  conviction  of  your  sinfulness  have  found  a 
Saviour  from  your  sin,  —  tell  me,  all  ye  who,  bowed 
down  in  the  dust  in  the  humiliation  of  your 
worthlessness,  have  heard  there,  with  your  face 
close  to  the  ground,  what  you  could  never  hear 
while  you  stood  upright,  the  streams  of  pardon 
running  sweet  music  down  below, — tell  me,  is 
not  the  well  of  richest  joy  right  here  in  the  midst 
of  the  valley  of  completest  sorrow ;  where  sin 
abounded    does     not     grace    much    more    abound? 

0  my  dear  brethren,  if  any  of  you  now  are  going 
through  that  valley,  may  He  who  led  you  there 
teach  you  how  to  "  use  it  for  a  well."  Every  step 
as  you  go  through  it  may  you  hear  a  voice  beside 
you  crying,  "  Ho,  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye 
to  the  fountain." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  trace  out  also,  as  an  ele- 
ment in  this  economy  of  transmutation,  the  way  in 
which  a  man  may  get  joy  out  of  suffering  by  being 
brought  through  suffering  into  a  deeper  knowledge 
of  the  nature  and  purpose  of  God.  Prosperity,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  unconscious  of  God.  Suffering, 
whether  it  will  or  no,  has  to  be  conscious  of  him. 
And  if  there  be  a  perfectly  unselfish  joy,  one  entirely 
and  perfectly  pure,  one  in  which  the  human  faculty 
of  joyfulness  reaches  its  highest  exaltation,  it  must 
be  the  earnest  delight  with  which  a  man  who  loves 
God  puts  himself  aside  and  is  utterly  happy  in 
watching  and  seeing  what  God  is  and  how  he  works. 

1  have  seen  a  man  whom  the  world  called  a  fearful 
sufferer  living  delightful  days  in  this  high  study  of 
the  ways  of  God.     Day  by  da}'  his  Maker  took  some 


THE    VALLEY  OF   BACA.  3S 

strength  out  of  his  life,  unstrung  some  nerve,  put 
some  pain  in ;  but  the  suffering  of  a  decaying  body  was 
so  far  surpassed  by  the  rare  joy  of  feeling  his  Maker's 
hands  busy  on  the  body  and  the  spirit  he  had  made, 
and  of  studying  his  wondrous  ways  of  working,  that 
his  hours  of  sickness  were  the  happiest  that  he  had 
ever  lived.  He  saw  God  glorifying  himself,  and  was 
abundantly  content ;  that  was  the  well  of  which  he 
drank. 

"  Who  passing  through  the  vale  of  Baca  make  it  a 
well ;  the  rain  also  filleth  the  pools."  How  beauti- 
fully the  two  clauses  tell  of  the  responsive  positions 
of  God  and  the  human  soul  in  suffering !  It  is  a 
meeting  of  water  from  below  and  water  from  above. 
The  wells  fill  themselves  out  of  the  ground  and  the 
rain  comes  from  the  sky  into  the  pools ;  yet  both 
from  the  same  original  source.  Never  so  much  as  in 
suffering  does  the  divinity  which  God  gave  to  man 
come  out  and  show  itself  to  meet  the  new  divinity 
which  he  sends  down  to  it  out  of  Heaven.  Have  you 
never  been  struck  by  coming  suddenly  on  the  face  of 
a  man  whom  you  had  known  long  and  well,  but  who 
since  you  knew  him  had  been  a  sufferer  either  men- 
tally or  bodily ;  and  seeing  how  his  face  had  grown 
finer  and  nobler,  so  that  you  almost  were  awed  be- 
fore him  at  first  ?  Something  had  come  out  from  him 
and  something  had  come  into  him.  His  grossness 
had  grown  delicate  and  his  brutishness  gentle  by  his 
sorrow.     And  as  with  faces,  so  with  characters. 

Here  we  must  stop.  The  Bible  calls  the  world  a 
world  of  sorrow ;  but  the  same  Bible  tells  us  there  is 
a  way  of  making  the  vale  of  misery  to  laugh  with 


34  THE   VALLEY  OF   BACA. 

springs  and  fountains.  Remember,  it  is  not  just 
compensation,  but  transformation  that  you  are  to 
seek.  Not  Heaven  yet.  That  looms  before  us  al- 
ways, tempting  us  on  ;  but  now  the  earth,  with  all 
its  duties,  sorrows,  difficulties,  doubts,  and  dangers. 
We  want  a  faith,  a  truth,  a  grace  to  help  us  now, 
right  here,  where  we  are  stumbling  about,  dizzied 
and  fainting  with  our  thirst.  And  we  can  have  it. 
One  who  was  man,  yet  mightier  than  man,  has 
walked  the  vale  before  us.  When  he  walked  it,  he 
turned  it  all  into  a  well  of  living  water.  To  them 
who  are  willing  to  walk  in  his  footsteps,  to  keep  in 
his  light,  tlie  well  he  opened  shall  be  forever  flowing. 
Nay,  it  shall  pass  into  him  and  fulfil  there  Christ's 
own  words :  "  Whosoever  drinketh  of  the  water  that 
I  shall  give  him  shall  never  thirst,  but  the  water  that 
I  shall  give  him  shall  be  in  him  a  well  of  water 
springing  up  into  everlasting  life." 


ni. 

HOMAGE    AND    DEDICATION. 

"  And  the  four  and  twenty  elders  fall  down  before  Him  that  sat 
on  the  throne,  and  worship  Iliiu  that  liveth  for  ever  and  ever,  and 
cast  their  crowns  before  the  throne." —  Revelation  iv.  10. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  mind  to  conceive  of  a  more 
majestic  picture  than  is  presented  in  this  fourth  chap- 
ter of  the  Book  of  Revelation.  The  Church  of 
Christ,  with  all  her  labors  done  and  all  her  warfare 
over,  stands  at  length  in  heaven,  before  the  throne  of 
Him  whose  servant  she  has  been,  and  renders  up  her 
trust  and  gives  all  the  glory  back  to  Him.  When  we 
hear  such  a  scene  described  in  the  few  words  of 
John's  poetic  vision,  I  think  we  are  met  with  a 
strange  sort  of  difficulty.  The  great  impression  of 
the  picture  is  so  glorious  that  we  are  afraid  to  touch 
it  with  too  curious  fingers,  to  analyze  its  meaning 
and  get  at  its  truth.  At  the  same  time  we  feel  sure 
that  there  is  in  it  a  precise  and  definitely  shaped 
truth  which  is  blurred  to  us  by  the  very  splendor  of 
the  poetry  in  which  it  is  enveloped.  We  see  on  the 
one  hand  how  often  the  whole  significance  of  some  of 
the  noblest  things  in  Scripture  is  lost  and  ruined  by 
people  who  take  hold  of  them  with  hard,  prosaic 
hands.  Their  poetry  is  necessary  to  their  truth. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  see  how  many  of  the  most 


36  HOMA(iK   AND   DEDICATION. 

sacred  truths  of  revelation  float  always  before  many 
people's  eyes  in  a  mere  vague  halo  of  mystical  splen- 
dor, because  they  never  come  boldly  up  to  them  as 
Moses  went  up  to  the  burning  bush,  to  see  what  they 
are,  and  what  are  the  laws  by  which  they  act.  Shall 
we  interpret  the  poetry  of  Scripture  into  ordinary  lan- 
guage or  not?  No  one  reads  the  commentaries  with- 
out feeling  that  often  it  would  be  better  not  to  do  so  ; 
but  no  one  sees  how  many  of  the  false  religious  ideas 
and  superstitions  have  come  of  an  intense  and  dazzled, 
but  blind,  perception  of  Scripture  poetry,  without 
feeling  how  wisely  it  needs  to  be  interpreted  and 
studied.  There  is  danger  of  mysticism  and  vague- 
ness, if  you  leave  the  wonderful  Bible  images  unex- 
plained. There  is  danger  of  prosaic  dulness  and  the 
loss  of  all  their  life  and  fire,  if  you  elucidate  them 
overmuch. 

It  is  seen  everywhere.  The  great  New  Testament 
image  is  the  cross  of  Christ,  and  any  one  can  see  how 
on  the  one  hand  the  cross  has  become  a  mere  object 
of  vague  and  feeble  sentiment  to  multitudes  who 
have  been  touched  by  its  beauty  without  trying  to 
understand  its  meaning  ;  and  how,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  has  become  hard  and  shallow  and  commercial,  all 
the  mystery  and  depth  and  power  of  appeal  passed  out 
of  it,  as  men  have  torn  its  sacred  agony  to  pieces,  and 
tried  to  account  on  mercantile  principles  for  every 
pang  that  Jesus  suffered  and  every  mercy  that  His 
suffering  offers  to  the  world. 

In  view  of  all  this  difficulty,  what  shall  we  do  ?  It 
is  not  hard  to  tell  what  we  ought  to  do,  by  every 
Scripture  image  and  poetic    description,  although  it 


HOMAGE   AND   DEDICATION.  37 

may  be  very  hard  to  do  it.  We  want  to  draw  out 
its  truth  without  forgetting  that  it  is  poetry;  we 
want  to  get  out  of  it  a  broad  and  clear  idea,  which 
shall  still  keep  the  glow  with  which  it  burned  while 
it  lay  still  in  the  fire  of  poetic  inspiration.  We  want 
to  leave  it  in  heaven,  and  yet  bring  it  down  to  earth. 
We  want  to  understand  it  more,  and  yet  feel  it  just 
as  much.  Something  of  this  kind  I  want  to  try  to 
do  to-day,  with  reference  to  the  great  apocalyptic 
image  of  the  four  and  twenty  elders  casting  their 
crowns  before  the  throne  of  God. 

What  is  the  broad  idea,  then,  of  this  great  spec- 
tacle ?  The  four  and  twenty  elders  have  been  often 
considered  to  represent  the  Church  in  its  two  great 
series,  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  orders.  Twelve 
patriarchs  and  twelve  apostles  may  be  considered  as 
representatively  constituting  that  company  who  came? 
with  all  the  fruits  and  honors  of  successful  life,  to 
offer  them  to  Him  by  whose  great  strength  they  had 
been  won.  Such  an  interpretation  seems  very  likely 
to  be  true ;  but  in  a  yet  broader  way  we  have  here 
crowned  beings,  those  who  had  won  some  victory 
and  possessed  some  kingship,  giving  the  very  badges 
and  tokens  of  their  victory  and  glory  to  another 
greater  than  themselves,  casting  their  kingly  crowns 
before  the  kingly  throne  of  a  royalty  mightier  than 
their  own.  I  believe  that  the  picture  has  that  special 
reference  to  the  relations  of  the  Christian  Church  to 
its  great  Head  ;  but  does  it  not  also  suggest  to  us 
still  broader  ideas  which  are  illustrated  through  all 
of  human  history,  and  which  find  their  illustrations 
<?onstantly  in  all  our  daily  life  ?     Those  ideas  seem  to 


38  HOMAGE   AND  DEDICATION. 

me  to  be  two.  The  first  is  the  necessary  homage 
which  the  higher  natures  pay  to  those  that  are  higher 
than  themselves,  and  especially  to  the  highest  of  all. 
The  second  is  the  way  in  which  every  great  attain- 
ment gets  its  best  value  from  being  dedicated  to 
somebody  or  some  purpose  that  is  greater  still. 
These  two  ideas  I  see  coming  up  out  of  this  picture, 
as  the  soul  of  a  man  looks  out  upon  you  from  his 
face.  I  want  to  dwell  upon  them  with  you  for  a  while 
this  morning.  I  think  that  they  can  suggest  for  us 
a  good  deal  about  the  whole  nature  of  reverence  and 
worship. 

Take,  then,  the  first  of  these  ideas  —  the  necessary 
homage  that  high  natures  pay  to  others  which  are 
higher  than  themselves,  and  especially  to  the  high- 
est of  all.  Here  are  crowned  beings  casting  their 
crowns  down  at  the  feet  of  a  dimly  seen  figure 
which  sits  upon  a  throne  so  much  higher  than  they 
are  that  even  their  crowns  can  only  reach  his  feet. 
Shall  we  take  that  idea  and  lay  it  down  by  the  ex- 
perience of  ordinary  life?  Does  reverence  increase 
as  men  grow  themselves  to  be  more  and  more, 
greater  and  greater  ?  Think  of  it  first  with  reference 
to  the  homage  that  men  come  to  pay  to  what  is 
higher  than  themselves,  but  not  the  highest  —  not  to 
God.  Every  strong  young  man  starts  in  a  true 
self-confidence.  He  is  the  master  of  everything. 
Everything  is  to  be  his  servant.  Centred  in  himself, 
he  sees  all  other  things  revolving  around  him  as  if 
they  were  to  be  the  ministers  of  his  necessities.  If 
he  is  going  into  politics,  the  country  is  an  arena  that 
has  been  spread  abroad  for  the  race  he  is  to  run.     If 


HOMAGE   AND  DEDICATION.  39 

he  is  to  be  an  artist,  the  laws  of  the  materials  of  art 
are  but  expedients  to  utter  the  beauty  and  sublimity 
that  is  in  his  soul.  If  he  is  going  into  business,  the 
great  adjustments  of  the  business  world  are  the  ma- 
chinery out  of  which  is  to  be  wrought  his  fortune. 
There  is  no  reverence  in  all  that.  Wrapped  up  in 
himself,  the  eager  young  aspirant  has  not  caught 
sight  of  the  true  and  regal  dignity  of  these  masters 
whom  he  assumes  to  treat  as  servants.  But  what 
comes  later  ?  Let  our  young  man  grow  really  great 
in  any  one  of  these  departments,  and  I  take  it  to  be 
a  universal  truth,  a  truth  which  all  will  recognize, 
that  the  greater  he  grows  the  more  he  will  come  to 
know  that  those  things,  which  he  thought  to  make 
servants  of,  are  really  masters,  and  by  and  by  he 
will  pass  into  a  region  where  he  is  able  to  pay  them 
the  homage  they  deserve.  The  mere  tyro  in  politics 
thinks  the  country  is  made  for  his  ambition ;  but  the 
great  statesman  sees  his  country  a  great  and  venerable 
being  for  whom  it  is  his  privilege  to  work  and  live, 
and  perhaps  die.  The  flippant  beginner  in  art  thinks 
that  all  the  laws  of  art  are  merely  arrangements  to 
help  his  genius  into  expression ;  but  the  great  artist 
is  sure  that  the  noblest  task  his  genius  can  attempt 
is  only  to  utter  in  visible  material  some  of  the  ever- 
lasting laws  of  beauty.  The  confident  young  trader 
thinks  the  whole  market  made  for  him ;  but  the  great 
merchant  has  looked  wide  over  all  the  earth,  and  is 
proud  to  be  a  part  in  that  great  system  of  interlacing 
work  and  mutual  credit  that  covers  all  the  continents. 
Thus  every  man,  the  greater  he  grows,  becomes  ca- 
pable of   understanding  the  greatness  of  that  with 


40  HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION. 

which  he  has  to  deal,  and  so  enters  into  the  region  of 
a  new  homage.  Newton  could  reverence  the  power 
of  gravitation  more  than  the  child  who  ignorantly 
tosses  his  ball  into  the  air  and  sees  it  fall.  Morse 
was  more  able  to  honor  the  subtle  and  mighty  force 
of  electricity  than  is  the  mere  telegraph  operator 
who  knows  nothing  but  the  mere  manipulation  of  his 
machine.  It  is  a  universal  rule  that  he  is  a  poor 
workman  who  does  not  honor  and  respect  his  work. 
A  man  has  no  right  to  be  doing  any  work  which,  as 
he  grows  greater  within  it,  does  not  offer  him  new 
views  of  itself  to  call  out  an  ever-increasing  rever- 
ence and  honor.  And  in  all  the  good  occupations  of 
life  (one  would  like  to  impress  it  upon  every  young 
merchant,  young  mechanic,  and  young  student  whom 
he  can  speak  to)  a  man's  best  proof  of  growing 
greatness  in  himself  is  a  growing  perception  of  the 
greatness  and  beauty  of  his  work. 

The  same  is  true  of  men.  The  greater  a  man 
grows,  the  more  quick  and  ready  he  will  be  to  recog- 
nize and  honor  another  man  who  is  his  better.  Here 
again  there  is  no  test  so  certain  of  whether  a  man 
has  any  greatness  as  whether  he  is  able  to  pay  intel- 
ligent and  sincere  respect  to  other  men  who  have 
more  than  he  has.  There  seem  to  be  certain  states 
of  condition,  as  it  were,  with  reference  to  this. 
Down  at  the  bottom  an  unenterprising  mortal  looks 
with  blank  and  stupid  wonder  at  the  really  great 
men  who  stand  at  the  top  of  his  race.  Up  a  little 
higher  he  is  moved  with  envy  and  begins  to  dispar- 
age them;  but  when  he  comes  to  be  great  himself,  he 
knows  how  to  understand  them,  and  yet  recognizes 


HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION.  41 

how  much  they  are  above  him.  He  has  become  ca- 
pable of  truly  venerating  them.  Only  those  who 
are  kingly  themselves  can  properly  honor  the  king- 
liest. 

And  then  think  of  the  worship,  not  merely  of  that 
which  is  higher  than  a  man's  self,  but  of  that  which 
is  the  highest  of  all — the  worship  of  God.  There 
it  is  supremely  true  that  men  are  capable  of  it  only 
in  virtue  of  and  in  proportion  to  something  great, 
something  divine  in  themselves.  Only  those  who 
have  crowns  to  cast  can  do  true  homage  before  His 
throne.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  bound  up  with  what 
I  have  already  said.  1  claimed  —  and  I  think  you 
agreed  with  me  —  that  it  was  the  man  most  profi- 
cient in  any  profession  who  saw  the  depth  and  range 
of  that  profession  best,  and  so  reverenced  it  most 
deeply.  It  is  the  mere  smatterer  in  any  profession 
who  thinks  it  slight  and  is  contemptuous  about  it. 
Now,  just  exactly  this  is  true  of  life.  The  more 
completely  a  man  lives,  the  more  largely  alive  he  is  in 
every  part  of  him,  —  in  brain,  and  heart,  and  hands, — 
the  more  completely  he  will  comprehend  the  magni- 
tude of  life,  and  stand  in  reverence  before  the  Power 
that  moves  and  governs  it.  The  mere  smatterer  in 
life,  the  amateur  in  living,  so  to  speak,  with  his  half- 
vital  movements,  never  realizes  the  immensity  of  ex- 
istence, the  vast  variety  of  its  complications,  the 
infiniteness  of  its  privileges  and  its  dangers,  the 
range  upward  and  the  range  downward,  and  so  he 
goes  on  satisfied  within  himself,  and  offering  no 
tribute  of  adoration  to  the  Power  which  moves  in, 
and  through,  and  under  all  this  world  of  life,  which 


42  HOMAGE   AND   DEDICATION. 

he  has  never  fathomed  deep  enough  to  find  adorable. 
But  this  moving  power  of  all  things  is  God.  His 
nature  is  what  the  soul  finds,  when  tired  and  be- 
wildered, like  a  frightened  bird  which  has  escaped 
from  its  own  little  cage,  it  flies  through  the  vast  ex- 
panse of  life  and  comes  to  the  shadow  that  encloses 
it.  That  follows  then  which  I  believe  that  we 
continually  see.  The  man  most  thoroughly  alive,  he 
who  lives  most,  will  be  most  reverent  to  God.  I  do 
not  mean  that  he  will  always  hold  the  correctest 
ideas.  The  very  fulness  of  the  current  of  his  living 
may  sweep  out  here  and  there  strange  eccentricities 
and  aberrations  in  his  way  of  thinking,  but  he  will 
be  most  constantly  conscious  of  a  power  over  him, 
from  which  he  came,  out  of  which  streams  of  influ- 
ence are  always  flowing  into  him,  to  which  he  is  re- 
sponsible, to  which  he  must  return.  The  more  a 
man  loves,  the  more  he  realizes  the  limitations  in 
which  all  earthly  affection  labors,  and  the  more 
glorious  appears  to  him  the  Infinite  Love.  The 
more  a  man  thinks,  the  more  he  sees  how  all  human 
thought  is  but  a  drop  of  water  out  of  the  illimitable 
ocean  of  the  thought  of  God.  And  when  a  true 
man  puts  his  hand  to  it  and  bravely  does  an  honest 
piece  of  work,  he  sees  at  once  the  beauty  and  the 
littleness  of  the  work  he  does,  and  comprehends  the 
glory  of  the  perfect  work  of  Him  through  whom  are 
all  things,  and  by  whom  are  all  things.  Some  such 
necessary  connection  there  seems  to  be  between  the 
largest  living  and  the  completest  adoration.  I  have 
known  many  scoffers,  men  who  believed  that  there 
was  a  God,  but  who  did  not  in  any  way  prostrate 


HOMAGE  AND   DEDICATION.  43 

themselves  before  Him,  paid  Him  no  homage ;  some 
of  them  were  very  bright  men,  some  of  them  con- 
scientious and  dutiful,  some  of  them  affectionate  and 
brave  ;  but — I  do  not  wholly  know  why  — there  was 
something  imperfect  in  the  development  of  their 
humanity,  as  it  always  seemed.  They  were  the  men 
of  unsymmetrical  culture;  the  men  in  whom  some 
one  power  was  overgrown  and  the  rest  were  sluggish ; 
the  men  who  did  not  impress  you  with  largeness  of 
life,  but  with  special,  almost  mechanical,  dexterity  of 
action ;  the  men  whom  you  might  call  upon  for  cer- 
tain tasks  which  require  certain  skill,  but  whom  you 
could  not  trust  with  that  entire  confidence  which  can 
only  rest  on  character.  In  one  word,  they  were  not 
kingly  men,  not  men  who  in  any  regal  way,  accord- 
ing to  the  old  idea  of  a  king,  represented  their  race. 
Men  with  sharp,  ingenious  tools  in  their  hands,  but 
no  crowns  upon  their  heads.  And  almost  every  one 
of  us  knows,  too,  that  in  his  own  life  there  have  been 
scoffing  and  scornful  times,  periods  of  irreverence, 
when  the  sacred  was  not  sacred  to  us,  and  the  vener- 
able excited  in  us  no  veneration ;  times  when  if  we 
did  not  scoff  at  God,  it  was  not  because  we  adored 
Him,  but  because  the  habits  of  decent,  reverential  be- 
havior were  strong  enough  to  carry  us  through  times 
of  utter  selfishness,  when  nothing  seemed  great  to  us 
beyond  ourselves;  times  of  utter  demoralization,  when 
nothing  was  mysterious,  or  inspiring,  or  sublime. 
And  what  is  our  impression  of  such  times?  Some 
of  them  were  the  smartest  periods  of  all  our  life. 
They  were  perhaps  the  times  when  we  worked  our 
hardest — our  keenest,  wittiest,  busiest  days  perhaps. 


44  HOMAGE  AND   DEDICATION. 

but  not  our  best,  not  those  which  we  should  choose 
even  out  of  our  poor,  stained,  sordid  lives,  if  we 
were  required  to  select  some  which  should  give  a 
being  of  another  race  some  notion  of  the  best  life  of 
a  man.  Surely  we  have  been  our  best  at  those  times 
when  we  have  most  completely  worshipped  some- 
thing far  better  than  ourselves.  It  is  when  we  have 
cast  our  crown  most  humbly  before  God  that  our 
crown  has  been  most  real,  that  we  have  known  that 
there  was  indeed  a  spark  of  something  kingly  in  our 
natures. 

And  then  there  is  one  other  way  of  looking  at  this 
matter.  Think  what  company  you  are  in  when  you 
are  most  reverential  and  full  of  the  spirit  of  worship. 
When  a  man  is  at  his  business  on  mere  selfish  prin- 
ciples, exercising  his  business  shrewdness,  providing 
for  himself  and  for  his  family,  far  be  it  from  me  to 
speak  with  any  slight  of  such  practical  good  occupa- 
tion ;  but  yet  he  is  not  there  about  the  highest  labor, 
nor  associating  himself  with  the  highest  company  in 
the  long  lines  of  history.  So  long  as  a  man  is  living 
for  himself  and  honoring  himself,  there  is  an  associa- 
tion, however  remote  it  may  be,  with  all  the  lowest 
forms  of  selfishness  in  which  men  have  lived;  but 
the  moment  a  man  begins  to  live  in  genuine  adora- 
tion of  the  absolute  good,  and  worship  God,  he  parts 
company  from  all  these  lower  orders  of  human  life 
and  enters  into  the  richest  and  best  society  that  earth 
possesses  or  ever  has  possessed.  Think  who  you  are 
with  in  adoration.  When  you  say  to  God,  "  O  God, 
take  me,  for  the  highest  thing  that  I  can  do  with  my- 
self is  to  give  myself  to  Thee,"  when  you  say  that  to 


HOMAGE    AND    DEDICATION.  45 

God,  humbly,  but  with  all  your  heart,  kneeling  all 
apart  in  your  chamber,  where  no  one  can  see  you,  it 
is  bewildering  to  me  to  think  into  what  company  you 
are  taken  instantly  by  that  prayer  of  devotion.  You 
sweep  into  the  current  of  the  best,  the  holiest,  and 
the  most  richly  human  of  our  humanity,  which  in 
every  age  has  dedicated  itself  to  God.  The  wor^ 
shippers  of  all  the  world — the  Jew,  the  Greek,  the 
Hindu,  the  Christian  in  all  his  various  cultures,  take 
you  for  their  brother.  You  have  part  in  the  offering 
of  Abel's  altar,  in  the  worship  of  Solomon's  temple, 
in  the  prison  talk  of  Socrates,  in  the  closet  adoration 
of  all  the  saints.  You  are  never  in  such  company  as 
when  you  are  before  God's  throne  offering  Him  your 
brightest  and  most  precious.  Yes,  men  are  measured 
by  their  reverences.  All  human  life  is  like  the  an- 
nual procession  of  the  Jews,  marching  up  to  Jeru- 
salem, to  the  Holy  City.  The  nearer  we  are  to  that 
place  of  supreme  adoration,  the  nearer  the  purpose  of 
our  life  is  fulfilled.  What  do  you  adore,  what  do 
you  really  reverence  and  respect?  is  the  real  test  ques- 
tion of  your  life.  In  an  age  which  makes  too  little 
of  reverence,  let  us  not  dare  to  let  drop  the  truth 
that  only  that  which  is  high  can  worship  the  highest, 
and  so  covet  as  the  best  crown  of  our  existence  the 
power  so  to  know  and  feel  that  we  can  genuinely 
worship  God. 

And  now  let  us  take  the  second  idea  which  seemed 
to  be  in  our  text.  That  idea  was,  that  our  highest 
attainments  always  get  their  best  value  from  being 
offered  to  others  who  are  dearer  to  us  and  higher 
than  ourselves.     Go  back  to  our  picture  again.     The 


46  HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION. 

four  and  twenty  elders  are  casting  their  crowns  before 
the  throne  of  Christ.  Those  crowns  are  the  attain- 
ments of  their  lives.  All  that  the  work  of  grace  had 
done  in  them,  all  the  fruit  of  their  long  education,  — 
they  valued  it  only  as  they  might  offer  it  to  Him  who 
was  the  object  of  their  reverence  and  loA'^e.  How 
clearly  we  are  touching  here  upon  one  of  the  uni- 
versal experiences  of  men.  Is  it  not  true  that  we  do 
all  things  best,  when  out  beyond  the  thing  that  we 
are  doing  there  stands  some  one  whom  we  love  and 
admire  for  whom  the  task  is  done  ?  The  scholar  who 
is  working  hard  at  his  problem  in  order  that  some 
day  he  may  take  his  triumphant  solution  of  it  in  his 
hands  and  go  to  his  master  who  gave  him  his  first 
lessons,  and  say  to  him,  "  Take  this,  this  belongs  to 
you,  for  I  never  should  have  done  it  if  you  had  not 
tauofht  me ; "  the  soldier  who  in  the  midst  of  battle 
is  inspired  by  the  thought  that  if  he  is  brave  and 
conquers  he  will  give  back  life  to  the  country  that 
gave  life  to  him ;  the  school-boy,  who,  resisting  a 
school  temptation,  is  strengthened  by  the  thought  of 
father  and  mother  at  home,  who  have  taught  him  to 
be  true  and  generous,  and  who  comes  home  after- 
wards and  says,  "  They  wanted  me  to  be  mean  and  to 
lie,  and  I  did  not  because  I  remembered  you,  and  so 
it  was  your  strength  that  resisted  and  not  mine,"  — 
all  these  seem  to  me  to  be  younger  brethren  of  the 
elders  casting  their  crowns  down  at  the  throne-steps 
of  their  Master ;  full  of  the  same  spirit,  living  the 
same  life. 

Such  influences  are  certainly  stronger  and  more 
frequent  than  we  know.     We  are  often  working  in 


HOMAGE   AND  DEDICATION.  47 

this  way,  with  a  deep  reverence  for  others,  when  it 
seems  as  if  we  were  doing  what  we  do  wholly  for 
ourselves.  A  ship  captain,  sails  out  on  a  long 
voyage,  and  as  he  goes  it  seems  as  if  he  carried 
all  his  interests  and  impulses  shut  up  with  him  in 
that  little  ship.  He  finds  his  plenteous  enjoyment 
everywhere.  He  revels  in  the  problems  of  naviga- 
tion that  his  well-trained  skill  knows  how  to  solve. 
He  spends  long  nights  on  deck,  and  conquers  the 
elements  that  seem  to  have  marshalled  all  their  fury 
to  decree  that  the  little  ship  shall  not  go  through. 
He  rules  his  crew.  He  feels  the  daily  joy  of  diffi- 
culties overcome.  At  last  he  comes  to  the  haven 
where  he  wants  to  be.  There  all  his  business  crowds 
his  days.  He  is  full  of  intercourse  with  men.  He 
accomplishes  the  purpose  of  his  voyage.  He  sells 
his  cargo,  and  with  a  new  one  shipped  he  sails  back, 
through  months  of  work  and  interest  and  danger,  till 
he  is  at  the  wharf  from  which  he  sailed  a  year  ago. 
And  then  —  what  then  ?  Why,  he  goes  up  on  shore 
and  finds  out  a  little  house  where  a  little  child,  a 
mere  baby-child,  is  living  in  a  nurse's  care,  and  gives 
the  treasure  of  his  voyage,  all  that  he  has  earned, 
into  the  little  hands  of  his  unknowing  child,  who 
really  was  the  single  cause  and  inspiration  of  his 
toilsome  voyage,  and  really  is  the  reason  why  he 
rejoices  in  its  success.  He  has  not  seemed  —  not 
even  to  himself  —  to  think  of  her,  but  really  she  has 
been  there  in  the  bottom  of  his  heart  all  the  long 
time.  The  whole  success  is  valuable  to  him  because 
he  may  make  an  offering  of  it  to  her.  If  you  doubt 
it,  think  how  it  would  be  if  he  came  back  and  found 


48  HOMAGE   AND  DEDICATION. 

her  dead  —  the  house  empty,  and  only  a  little  grave 
for  him  to  lavish  his  love  on.  Where  would  be  the 
value  of  his  treasures  then  ?  Who  could  wake  him 
out  of  the  bitterness  of  his  sorrow  by  rustling  the 
paper  or  rattling  the  money  in  his  ears  ?  How 
worthless  it  would  seem  when  she,  the  little 
daughter  for  whom  he  earned  it  all,  was  gone  ! 

Such  consecrations  of  our  life  to  others  are  very 
often  not  less  real  and  powerful  because  they  are 
unconscious.  Often  they  are  not  revealed  to  us  our- 
selves until  some  sorrow  comes,  such  as  I  just  de- 
scribed. How  many  of  us  have  known  what  all  this 
means!  We  have  gone  on  with  our  work  in  life, 
thinking  that  the  purpose  of  our  work  was  centred 
in  ourselves !  It  was  our  own  work  that  we  were 
doing.  We  were  working  for  ourselves.  But  some 
day  a  friend  died  —  one  who  was  very  near  to  us,  one 
in  whom  our  life  was  bound  up  in  many  ways. 
Who  has  not  known  sometimes  in  life  the  dreadful 
going  out  of  all  the  interest  of  living  at  the  time  of 
such  a  death  ?  It  seemed  as  if  there  were  nothing 
left  to  live  for.  You  looked  upon  your  money,  and 
wondered  how  you  ever  could  have  cared  to  earn  it. 
The  commonest  little  duties  that  recurred  after  the 
death  was  over  were  weariness  to  you.  You  looked 
forward,  and  it  seemed  as  if  you  never  could  live  out 
the  long,  flat,  dreary  days  that  stretched  between  you 
and  the  grave.  The  days  went  by,  each  with  its 
twenty-four  hours,  each  with  its  sunset  and  its  sun- 
rise, but  the  zest  of  them  was  all  gone  for  you.  The 
public  life,  the  social  life,  went  on,  but  it  called  to 
your  dead  interest  in  vain.     What  did  you  care  for 


HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION.  49 

it  all  ?  Then  you  found  that  you  had  indeed  been 
working  for  that  dear  dead  friend,  that  wife,  child, 
brother,  as  you  never  knew.  All  that  you  did  had 
taken  its  value,  not  from  you,  but  from  them. 
When  you  thought  you  were  working  for  yourself, 
you  really  had  been  working  for  them.  And  so  their 
death  had  taken  all  the  spring  and  impulse  from 
you.  It  was  terrible.  But  it  Avas  blessed  if  you  did 
not  stop  there,  but,  with  persistent  love  that  would 
not  be  satisfied  until  it  found  the  object  it  had  lost, 
you  traced  the  precious  life  on  as  it  left  you,  till  you 
followed  it  into  the  very  bosom  of  the  God  who  took 
it,  and  poured  out  there  the  treasures  of  devotion 
which  had  no  longer  any  one  dear  enough  to  tempt 
them  on  the  earth. 

One  cannot  help  feeling  as  he  looks  at  working- 
men  that  this  more  than  anything  else  is  what 
makes  the  difference  between  them  —  the  presence  or 
absence  in  their  lives  of  some  distinct  superior  pur- 
pose for  their  work,  to  which  it  is  all  dedicated.  It 
may  be  the  comfort  of  a  family,  it  may  be  a  good 
cause,  the  support  of  education,  the  fostering  of  the 
great  work  of  the  Church ;  whatever  it  is,  so  it  be 
something  greater  than  the  work  itself,  so  that  the 
work  is  turned  from  an  end  into  a  means,  it  light- 
ens the  pressure  of  the  work  most  wonderfully,  it 
relieves  the  continual  burden.  Take  two  men  work- 
ing in  the  field  together  —  they  dig  across  the  field 
side  by  side,  but  one  is  always  longing  for  the  end 
where  he  can  lie  down  and  rest.  The  other  rejoices 
in  every  stroke  of  his  spade  as  if  it  were  one  more 
stone  laid  in  the  home  that  he  is  trying  to  build,  in 


50  HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION. 

the  cause  which  he  desires  to  strengthen.  And  there 
is  no  work  so  lofty  in  itself  that  it  does  not  thus 
need  something  higher  than  itself  to  be  done  for, 
something  to  lift  its  heavy  pressure  from  the  sore  and 
weary  backs  of  men.  Even  the  work  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  that  work  in  which  His  soul  delighted,  the 
work  of  telling  men  of  God  and  saving  the  world  of 
sin,  —  I  think  no  one  can  read  the  Gospels  and  not  see 
that  He  was  always  lifting  the  heavy  pressure  of  that 
work  by  reminding  Himself  that  He  was  doing  it  for 
His  Father.  Is  it  not  very  touching  He  rests, 
beyond  His  own  pleasure  in  His  work,  upon  the  con- 
sciousness that  it  is  His  Father's  pleasure  too.  "  I 
have  finished  the  work  that  Thou  gavest  me  to  do." 
That  was  the  perfect  satisfaction  with  which  the 
Saviour,  as  it  were,  folded  His  hands  from  His  long 
task  and  went  to  hang  upon  the  cross.  That  was  the 
casting  down,  as  it  were,  of  His  crown  before  His 
Father's  throne. 

We  have  been  speaking  of  the  smaller  inspirations 
that  come  to  men  to  lighten  and  redeem  their  labors, 
but  they  are  all  subordinate  to  this,  the  sense  that 
the  work  that  we  are  doing  in  the  world  is  done  for 
Christ  and  God.  If  a  man  or  woman  is  able  to  get 
and  keep  that,  there  is  no  drudgery  so  mean  and 
crushing  that  it  cannot  be  lifted  and  made  buoyant  — 
absolutely  none.  It  is  good  to  think  how  many  men 
and  women  that  seemed  to  live  in  slavery  have  really 
lived  the  freest  lives,  lifted  above  their  slavery  by 
this  continual  consciousness  of  work  for  God.  They 
realized  another  meaning  of  those  wonderful  words 
of  David,  —  among   the  most  wonderful  in  all  the 


HOaiAGE  AND  DEDICATION.  51 

Bible,  I  think,  —  "I  will  walk  at  liberty, for  I  keep  thy 
commandments."  They  would  know  what  those 
words  that  we  used  in  this  morning's  service  really 
mean,  "  O  God,  whose  service  is  perfect  freedom." 
This  was  the  case  with  multitudes  of  the  poor  slaves 
who  have  toiled  anywhere  in  their  slavery  upon  the 
suffering  earth.  Flogged  to  their  work,  living  in 
misery,  torn  from  their  families,  stripped  of  all  the 
sweetness  of  life  that  comes  from  having  something, 
somebody,  to  work  for,  what  was  there  to  lift  off  the 
load  of  unthanked  and  unprofitable  labor  such  as 
theirs?  There  could  be  nothing  unless  there  came, 
as  there  did  come  to  many  a  darkened  soul  among 
them,  a  conviction  that  their  weary  work,  their 
weary  lives,  were  tributes  and  offerings  to  Jesus  — 
that  He  loved  them  so,  and  had  so  utterly  taken  them 
for  His,  that  He  was  pleased  and  glorified  when  they 
were  patient  and  submissive  in  the  wretchedness 
from  which  they  could  find  no  escape.  As  soon  as 
they  saw  this,  all  was  completely  changed.  The 
cabin  walls  opened  and  it  was  a  temple.  The  dreary 
cotton-field  became  alreadj',  by  anticipation  and  faith, 
the  field  beside  the  river  of  life  under  the  towers  of 
the  New  Jerusalem,  where  they  who  have  served  Him 
faithfully  and  glorified  His  name  are  to  walk  forever 
with  the  Lamb. 

We  speak  of  them  because  their  suffering  stood  out 
strong  and  picturesque.  But  the  release  that  came 
to  faithful  Christian  hearts  among  them  was  nothing 
different  in  kind  from  that  which  comes  to  hundreds 
of  patient  sufferers  everywhere,  always.  When  it 
enters   like  a  flood  of  li^ht  into   the  soul  of  some 


52  HOMAGE  AND   DEDICATION. 

wretched  invalid  or  some  victim  of  relentless  misfort» 
Line,  that  by  a  faithful  patience  under  his  suffering 
he  can  glorify  God  and  show  forth  the  power  of 
Christ,  then  what  a  change  comes  to  him  !  How 
all  is  transfigured!  How  full  of  beauty  the  hated  sick- 
room grows  !  There  is  something  behind  the  suffering 
for  the  suffering  to  rest  and  steady  itself  upon.  The 
light  has  been  kindled  behind  the  dark  window,  and 
all  its  fair  lines  and  bright  colors  shine  out.  In  the 
purpose  of  the  suffering  the  escape  from  the  suffer- 
ing is  found ;  as  when  Paul  and  Silas,  in  the  book 
of  Acts,  sang  praises  to  God  by  night  in  prison,  when 
they  turned  their  imprisonment  into  a  tribute  to 
their  Master,  then  "the  foundations  of  the  prison 
were  shaken,  and  .  .  .  the  doors  were  opened,  and 
every  one's  bands  were  loosed." 

I  am  sure  that  there  are  many  among  us  who  feel 
the  need  to  have  the  labor  of  our  life  redeemed,  — 
merchants,  clerks,  lawyers,  laborers,  teachers,  house- 
keepers, one  thing  or  another, — the  chosen  or  fated 
task  of  our  life  so  often  seems  to  be  mere  drudgery, 
crowding  us  down,  pressing  the  life  out  of  us.  It  is 
strange  how  soon  many  young  men  get  to  feel  this 
about  the  occupations  to  which  they  have  given  up 
their  lives,  and  all  their  first  enthusiasm  dies  away. 
Then  come  the  dreary  years  of  unrelieved  and  un- 
enthusiastic  work,  only  enlivened  by  the  unhealthy 
excitement  of  mere  commercial  rivalry  or  professional 
spite.  How  many  men  we  have  seen  restless  all  their 
lives,  forever  changing  their  work  because  they  could 
not  stand  the  heavy  pressure  of  mere  heavy,  hated 
toil !     Does  not  what  we  have  been  saying  seem  to 


HOMAGE  AND  DEDICATION.  53 

show  that  the  trouble  lies  not  in  the  kind  oi  work, 
but  in  this  — in  whether  men  have  beyond  their  work 
a  purpose  to  dedicate  it  to,  which  can  make  it  light 
and  buoyant?  No  doubt  some  works  more  easily 
find  such  a  purpose  than  others  do,  but  any  work 
that  is  good  and  honest  is  capable  of  it.  And  this 
decides  the  ranks  of  works  and  their  effects  upon  the 
men  who  do  them.  No  work  is  necessarily  sacred  in 
its  influence  upon  the  man  who  does  it,  and  no  le- 
gitimate w>)rk  is  necessarily  secular  and  secularizing. 
It  is  possible  to  sell  goods  for  God's  glory,  and  it  is 
possible  (as  the  Church  knows  only  too  well)  to  swing 
censers  and  pi(>ach  sermons  for  our  own ;  and  then 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  man  who  sells  goods  gets 
more  blessing  out  of  his  work  than  the  man  who 
swaj's  the  censer  or  preaches  the  discourse. 

One  would  wish  to  urge  this  very  strongly  upon 
every  man,  especially  upon  every  young  man  who  is 
just  beginning  his  work  in  life,  and  to  whom  his 
work,  it  may  be,  has  already  begun  to  show  that  in 
time  it  may  come  to  be  a  weariness  and  a  burden. 
What  you  need  is  some  purpose  beyond.  What  shall 
it  be  ?  The  possible  purposes  lie  in  circles  stretching 
one  beyond  another.  If  you  can  do  your  work  for  a 
friend  or  for  a  family  as  well  as  for  yourself,  you  have 
already  redeemed  much  of  its  sordidness.  If  you  can 
do  it  for  a  cause,  for  the  progress  of  society  and  the 
improvement  of  business,  for  your  country,  for  your 
church,  then  you  have  lifted  it  still  more.  If  you 
can  do  it  for  God,  in  perfect,  childlike,  loving  desire 
for  His  glory,  then  your  work,  be  it  as  heavy  in  its 
nature  as  it  may,  leaps  of  itself  from  the  low  ground, 


54  HOMAGE   AND   DEDICATION. 

and,  instead  of  crushing  you  with  it  to  the  earth,  car- 
ries you  up  every  day  into  the  presence  of  the  God 
for  whom  you  do  it.  That  is  the  continual  beauty 
of  a  consecrated  life,  possible  under  all  sorts  of  cir- 
cumstances, possible  to  every  kind  of  man  in  every 
kind  of  task. 

Need  I  tell  you  the  only  thing  that  remains  to  be 
told?  Need  I  tell  you  that  the  only  influence  which 
can  really  make  us  consecrate  our  lives  and  works  to 
Christ  is  the  profound  and  joyous  confidence  that 
Christ  has  done  that  for  us,  which  makes  the  utter 
consecration  of  ourselves  only  a  feeble  token  of  the 
gratitude  we  owe  and  want  to  give  ?  It  is  the  soul 
forgiven  —  the  soul  to  which  the  cross  is  everything 

—  the  soul  living  every  day  in  the  richness  of  the 
new  reconciliation  to  the  Father — this  is  the  soul 
that  values  all  it  nas  and  does,  only  as  a  possible 
tribute  to  its  Redeemer  and  its  Lord.  This  is  the 
soul  that  casts  its  Crown  of  life  down  at  the  feet 
of  the  Lord  of  life,  and  glories  in  its  Crown's  rich- 
ness not  for  itself,  but  for  the  greater  praise  of  Hinv 
Is  there  a  motive  of  work  conceivable  so  pure,  so 
strong,  so  joyous,  so  humbling,  so  exalting,  as  this  ? 

—  that  a  man  should  first  take  Christ's  free  love  and 
then  try  to  live  as  full  and  bounteous  a  life  as  pos- 
sible, that  he  might  have  as  worthy  a  tribute  as  pos- 
sible to  offer  to  his  Lord  and  Saviour? 


IV. 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE 
SEASHORE. 

"  And  Israel  saw  the  Egyptians  dead  upon  the  seashore."  —  Ex» 
ODU8  xiv.  30. 

It  was  the  Red  sea  which  the  children  of  Israel 
had  crossed  dry-shod,  "  which  the  Egyptians  essaying 
to  do  were  drowned."  The  parted  waves  had  swept 
back  upon  the  host  of  the  pursuers.  The  tumult 
and  terror,  which  had  rent  the  air,  had  sunk  into 
silence,  and  all  that  the  escaped  people  saw  was  here 
and  there  a  poor  drowned  body  beaten  up  upon  the 
bank,  where  they  stood  with  the  great  flood  between 
them  and  the  land  of  their  long  captivity  and  op- 
pression. It  meant  everything  to  the  Israelites.  It 
was  not  only  a  wonderful  deliverance  for  them,  but 
a  terrible  calamity  for  their  enemies.  It  was  the  end 
of  a  frightful  period  in  their  history.  These  were 
the  men  under  whose  arrogant  lordship  they  had 
chafed  and  wrestled.  These  hands  had  beaten  them. 
These  eyes  they  had  seen  burning  with  scorn  and 
hate.  A  thousand  desperate  rebellions,  which  had 
not  set  them  free,  must  have  come  up  in  their  minds. 
Sometimes  they  had  been  successful  for  a  moment ; 
sometimes  they  had  disabled  or  disarmed  their  ty- 
rants ;   but  always  the  old  tyranny  had  closed  back 


56  THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

upon  them  more  pitilessly  than  before.  But  now  all 
that  was  over;  whatever  else  they  might  have  to 
meet,  the  Egyptian  captivity  was  at  an  end.  Each 
dead  Egyptian  face  on  which  they  looked  was  token 
and  witness  to  them  that  the  power  of  their  masters 
over  them  had  perished.  They  stood  and  gazed  at 
the  hard  features,  set  and  stern,  but  powerless  in 
death,  and  then  turned  their  faces  to  the  desert,  and 
to  whatever  new  unknown  experiences  God  might 
have  in  store  for  them. 

It  is  a  picture,  I  think,  of  the  way  in  which  ex- 
periences in  this  world  become  finished,  and  men 
pass  on  to  other  experiences  which  lie  beyond.  In 
some  moods  it  seems  to  us  as  if  nothing  finally  got 
done.  When  we  are  in  the  thick  of  an  experience 
we  find  it  hard  to  believe  or  to  imagine  that  the  time 
will  ever  come,  when  that  experience  shall  be  wholly 
a  thing  of  the  past  and  we  shall  have  gone  out 
beyond  it  into  other  fields.  When  we  open  our  eyes 
morning  after  morning  and  find  the  old  struggle  on 
which  we  closed  our  eyes  last  night  awaiting  us ; 
when  we  open  our  door  each  day  only  to  find  our 
old  enemy  upon  the  doorstep ;  when  all  our  habits 
and  thoughts  and  associations  have  become  entwined 
and  colored  with  some  tyrannical  necessity,  which, 
however  it  may  change  the  form  of  its  tyranny,  will 
never  let  us  go,  —  it  grows  so  hard  as  almost  to  appear 
impossible  for  us  to  anticipate  that  that  dominion 
ever  is  to  disappear,  that  we  shall  ever  shake  free  our 
wings  and  leave  behind  the  earth  to  which  we  have 
been  chained  so  long.  On  the  long  sea-voyage  the 
green  earth  becomes  inconceivable.  To  the  traveller  in 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  57 

the  mountains  or  the  desert  it  becomes  very  difficult 
to  believe  that  he  shall  some  day  reach  the  beach  and 
sail  upon  the  sea.  But  the  day  comes,  nevertheless. 
Some  morning  we  go  out  to  meet  the  old  struggle,  and 
it  is  not  there.  Some  day  we  listen  for  the  old  voice 
of  our  old  tyrant,  and  the  air  is  still.  At  last  the  day 
does  come  when  our  Egyptian,  our  old  master,  who 
has  held  our  life  in  his  hard  hands,  lies  dead  upon 
the  seashore,  and  looking  into  his  cold  face  we  know 
that  our  life  with  him  is  over,  and  turn  our  eyes  and 
our  feet  eastward  to  a  journey  in  which  he  shall  have 
no  part.  Things  do  get  done,  and  when  they  do, 
when  anything  is  really  finished,  then  come  serious 
and  thoughtful  moments  in  which  we  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  have  let  that  which  we  shall  know  no 
longer  do  for  us  all  that  it  had  the  power  to  do, 
whether  we  are  carrying  out  of  the  finished  experi- 
ence that  which  it  has  all  along  been  trying  to  give 
to  our  characters  and  souls. 

I  For  while  we  leave  everything  behind  in  time,  it 
'is  no  less  true  that  nothing  is  wholly  left  behind. 
All  that  we  ever  have  been  or  done  is  with  us  in 
some  power  and  consequence  of  it  until  the  end.  Is 
it  not  most  significant  that  these  children  of  Israel, 
whom  we  behold  to-day  looking  the  dead  Egyptians 
in  the  face  and  then  turning  their  backs  on  Egypt, 
are  known  and  appealed  to  ever  afterwards  as  the 
people  whom  the  Lord  their  God  had  brought  "  out 
of  the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of  bondage"  ? 
In  every  most  critical  and  sacred  moment  of  their 
history  they  are  bidden  to  recall  their  old  captivity. 
When  God  most  wants  them  to  know  Him,  it  is  as 


68  THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

the  God  of  their  deliverance  that  He  declares  Him- 
self. The  unity  of  life  is  never  lost.  There  must 
not  be  any  waste.  How  great  and  gracious  is  the 
economy  of  life  which  it  involves !  Neither  to  dwell 
in  any  experience  always,  nor  to  count  any  experience 
as  if  it  had  not  been,  but  to  leave  the  forms  of  our 
experiences  behind,  and  to  go  forth  from  them  clothed 
in  their  spiritual  power,  which  is  infinitely  free  and 
capable  of  new  activities,  —  this  is  what  God  is 
always  teaching  us  is  possible,  and  tempting  us  to 
do.  To  him  who  does  it  come  the  two  great  bless- 
ings of  a  growing  life,  —  faithfulness  and  liberty: 
faithfulness  in  each  moment's  task,  and  liberty  to 
enter  through  the  gates  beyond  which  lies  the  larger 
future.  "Well  done,  good  servant:  thou  hast  been 
faithful  over  a  few  things.  Enter  thou  into  the  joy 
of  thy  Lord." 

All  this  is  true,  but  it  is  very  general.  What  I 
want  to  do  this  morning  is  to  ask  you  to  think  about 
the  special  experience  to  which  our  text  refers,  and 
consider  how  one  truth  is  true  of  that,  and  of  what 
corresponds  to  it  in  all  men's  lives.  It  was  the  end 
of  a  struggle  which  had  seemed  interminable.  The 
hostility  of  Hebrew  and  Egyptian  had  gone  on  for 
generations.  However  their  enmity  may  be  dis- 
guised or  hidden,  the  tyrant  and  the  slave  are  always 
foes.  If  hope  had  ever  lived,  it  had  died  long  ago. 
Patient  endurance,  grim  submission,  with  desperate 
revolt  whenever  the  tyranny  grew  most  tyrannical, 
—  these  had  seemed  to  be  the  only  virtues  left  to  the 
poor  serfs.  Not  to  be  demoralized  and  ruined  by 
their  servitude,  to  keep  their  self-respect,  to  be  sure 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  59 

still  that  they  were  Abraham's  children  and  that 
Abraham's  God  still  cared  for  them,  patience  and 
fortitude, — these  must  have  been  the  exhortations 
which  they  addressed  to  their  poor  souls  as  they 
toiled  on  in  the  brickyard  or  by  the  river. 

It  does  not  prove  anything,  if  you  please,  about 
our  present  life,  but  it  certainly  sets  us  to  asking 
new  questions  about  it,  perhaps  to  believing  greater 
things  concerning  it,  when  in  our  typical  story  we 
behold  all  this  changed.  Behold,  the  day  came  when 
the  chains  were  broken  and  the  slaves  went  free. 
Are,  then,  our  slaveries  as  hopeless  as  they  seem? 
Are  we  condemned  only  to  struggle  with  our  enemies 
in  desperate  fight,  and  shall  we  not  hope  to  see  them 
some  day  dead  like  the  Egyptians  on  the  seashore? 

Surely  it  is  good  for  us  to  ask  that  question,  for 
nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  way  in  which, 
both  in  public  and  personal  life,  men  accept  the  per- 
manence of  conditions  which  are  certainly  some  day 
to  disappear.  The  whole  of  history  which  teaches 
us  that  mankind  does  conquer  its  enemies  and  see 
its  tyrants  by  and  by  lying  dead  on  the  seashore, 
often  appears  to  have  no  influence  with  the  minds 
of  men,  all  absorbed  as  they  are  in  what  seems  a 
hopeless  struggle.  But  look  around !  Where  are 
the  Egyptians  which  used  to  hold  the  human  body 
and  the  human  soul  in  slavery?  Have  you  ever 
counted?  The  divine  right  of  rulers,  the  dominion 
of  the  priesthood  over  the  intellect  and  conscience, 
the  ownership  of  man  by  man,  the  accepted  ine- 
quality of  human  lots,  the  complacent  acquiescence 
in  false  social  states,  the  use  of  torture  to  extort  the 


60  THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

needed  lie,  the  praise  of  ignorance  as  the  safeguard 
of  order,  the  irresponsible  possession  of  power  without 
corresponding  duty,  the  pure  content  in  selfishness  — 
do  you  realize,  in  the  midst  of  the  cynical  and  de- 
spairing talk  by  which  we  are  surrounded,  can  you 
realize,  how  these  bad  tyrants  of  the  human  race 
have  lost  their  power  over  large  regions  of  human 
life  ?  They  are  dead  Egyptians.  Abominable  social 
theories  which  fifty  years  ago,  in  the  old  days  of 
slavery,  in  the  old  days  of  accepted  pauperism, 
men  stated  as  melancholy,  but  hopeless,  truisms  are 
now  the  discarded  rubbish  of  antiquity,  kept  as  they 
keep  the  racks  and  thumb-screws  in  old  castle-dun- 
geons for  a  tourists'  show. 

Is  there  anything  more  wonderful  than  the  way  in 
which  men  to-day  are  daring  to  think  of  the  abolition 
and  disappearance  of  those  things  which  they  used 
to  think  were  as  truly  a  part  of  human  life  as  the 
human  body,  or  the  ground  on  which  it  walks  ?  Ah  ! 
my  friends,  you  only  show  how  you  are  living  in  the 
past,  not  in  the  present,  when  you  see  nothing  but 
material  for  sport  in  the  beliefs  of  ardent  men  and 
brave  societies  which  set  before  themselves  and  human 
kind  the  abolition  of  poverty,  the  abolition  of  war, 
the  abolition  of  ignorance,  the  abolition  of  disease, 
the  sweeping  away  of  mere  money  competition  as  the 
motive  power  of  life,  the  dethronement  of  fear  from 
the  high  place  which  it  has  held  among,  aye,  almost 
above,  all  the  ruling  and  shaping  powers  of  the  des- 
tiny of  man.  I  recognize  in  many  a  frantic  cry  the 
great  growing  conviction  of  mankind  that  nothing 
which  ought    not  to  be   need  be.     I  hear  in  many 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  Gl 

hoarse,  ungracious  tones  man's  utterance  of  his  con- 
viction that  much  which  his  fathers  thought  was] 
meant  to  cultivate  their  patience  by  submission,  is 
meant  also  to  cultivate  their  courage  by  resistance 
till  it  dies.  "  The  Egyptian  must  die."  That  is  the 
assurance  which  is  possessing  the  heart  of  man. 

When  any  evil  does  finally  perish,  then  there  is 
something  infinitely  pathetic  in  the  remembrance  of 
the  way  in  which  mankind  for  generations  accepted 
it  as  inevitable  and  drew  out  of  its  submission  to  it 
such  blessing  and  education  as  pure  submission  to  the 
inevitable  is  able  to  bestow.  The  poor  man,  who 
thinks  his  poverty,  and  the  ignorance  and  servitude 
which  his  poverty  entails,  all  right,  comforts  himself 
by  saying  that  God  made  him  poor  in  order  that  he 
might  be  patient  and  learn  to  possess  Ms  soul  in  self- 
respect.  By  and  by  when  the  iniquity  of  the  system 
under  which  he  has  lived  gives  way  and  he  finds  him- 
self admitted  to  the  full  rights  and  duties  of  a  man  — 
what  then  ?  Infinitely  pathetic,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is 
the  recognition  that  he  wins  of  the  great  love  and 
wisdom  with  which  God  would  not  let  even  that 
darkness  be  entirely  fruitless  of  light ;  but  while  He 
was  making  ready  for  the  fuller  life  of  which  the 
poor  man  never  dreamed,  at  the  same  time  fed  him 
in  the  wilderness  with  manna  which  the  wilderness 
alone  could  give,  so  that  no  delight  of  freedom  to 
which  he  afterwards  should  come  need  make  him 
wholly  curse  or  utterly  despise  the  regions  of  dark- 
ness and  restraint  through  which  he  came  to  reach  it. 

Is  it  not  thus  that  we  may  always  explain  at  least 
a  part,  the  best  part,  of  that  strange  longing  with 


62  THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

which  the  worki,  when  it  lias  entered  into  any  higher 
life,  still  finds  itself  looking  back  to  the  lower  life 
out  of  which  it  has  passed?  It  is  not  properly  regret. 
It  is  not  a  desire  to  turn  back  into  the  darkness.  The 
age  of  real  faith  does  not  covet  again  the  chains  of 
superstition.  The  world  at  peace  does  not  ask  to  be 
shaken  once  more  by  the  earthquakes  of  war.  But 
faith  does  feel  the  beauty  of  complete  surrender  which 
superstition  kept  for  its  sole  spiritual  virtue ;  and 
peace,  with  its  diffused  responsibility,  is  kindled  at  the 
thought  of  heroic  and  unquestioning  obedience  which 
the  education  of  war  produced.  Still  let  superstition 
and  war  lie  dead.  We  will  not  call  them  back  to 
life ;  but  we  will  borrow  their  jewels  of  silver  and 
jewels  of  gold  as  we  go  forth  into  the  wilderness  to 
worship  our  God  with  larger  worship.  Do  you  not 
feel  this  in  all  the  best  progress  ?  Do  you  not  see  it 
in  the  eyes  of  mankind,  in  the  depths  of  the  eyes  of 
mankind  always,  as  it  turns  away  from  the  dead  forms 
of  its  old  masters  and  goes  forth  into  the  years  to  be; 
the  hoarded  power  of  the  past  glowing  beneath  the 
satisfaction  of  the  present  and  the  fiery  hope  of  the 
unknown  future  ? 

Ah,  well,  there  is  always  something  fascinating  in 
thus  dwelling  on  the  fortunes  of  the  world  at  large, 
peering,  like  fortune-telling  gypsies,  into  the  open 
palm  which  she  holds  out  to  all  of  us.  It  is  fas- 
cinating, and  is  not  without  its  profit.  But  just  as,  I 
suppose,  the  shrewdest  gypsy  may  often  be  the  most 
recklessly  foolish  in  the  government  of  her  own  life, 
so  it  is  good  for  us  always  to  turn  speedily  and  ask 
how  the  principles  which  we  have  been  wisely  apply- 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  63 

ing  to  the  world,  apply  to  that  bit  of  the  world  which 
we  are  set  to  live. 

Do  we  believe — you  and  I  —  in  the  death  of  our 
Egyptians  ?  What  is  your  Egyptian  ?  Some  passion 
of  the  flesh  or  of  the  mind?  —  for  the  mind  has  its 
tyrannical  passions  as  well  as  the  flesh.  Years,  years 
ago,  you  became  its  captive.  Perhaps  you  cannot  at 
all  remember  when.  Perhaps,  like  these  children  of 
Israel,  you  were  born  into  its  captivity.  It  was  your 
father,  or  your  father's  fathers,  that  first  became  its 
slaves.  When  you  first  came  to  know  yourself,  its 
chains  were  on  your  limbs.  As  you  grew  older  you 
knew  that  it  was  slavery,  but  it  was  such  a  part  of 
all  you  were  and  all  you  did  that  you  accepted  it. 
That  has  not  made  you  cease  to  struggle  with  it,  but 
it  has  made  you  accept  struggle  hopelessly,  as  some- 
thing never  to  be  outgrown  and  left  behind.  You 
have  looked  forward  into  the  stretch  of  years,  and  in 
prophetic  imagination  you  have  seen  yourself  an  old 
man,  still  wrestling  with  the  tyranny  of  your  covet- 
ousness,  or  your  licentiousness,  or  your  prejudice, 
getting  it  down,  planting  your  foot  upon  its  neck, 
even  compelling  it  to  render  you,  out  of  the  unceasing 
struggle,  new  supplies  of  character ;  absolutely  fixed 
and  determined  never  to  give  up  the  fight  until  you 
die  —  to  die  fighting.  All  this  is  perfectly  familiar. 
Countless  noble  and  patient  souls  live  in  such  self- 
knowledge  and  consecration.  But  there  comes  some- 
thing vastly  beyond  all  these,  when  the  soul  dares  to 
believe  that  its  enemy  may  die,  that  the  lust,  or  the 
prejudice,  or  the  covetousness  may  absolutely  pass 
out  of  existence,  and  the  nature  be  absolutely  free  — 


04     THE   EGYPTIANS   DEAD   irpON   THE   SEASHORE. 

sure  DO  doubt  to  meet  other  enemies  and  to  struggle 
till  the  end,  but  done  with  that  enemy  forever,  with 
that  Egyptian  finally  dead  upon  the  seashore. 

When  that  conviction  takes  possession  of  a  man, 
his  fight  is  a  new  thing.  The  courage  not  of  des- 
peration, but  of  certain  hope,  fills  every  limb  and  gives 
its  force  to  every  blow.  The  victory  which  the  soul 
believes  is  coming  is  here  already  as  a  power  for  its 
own  attainment. 

Has  a  man  a  right  to  any  such  hope  as  that,  or  is 
it  the  mere  dream  of  an  optimistic  sermon  ?  I  dare 
appeal  to  you  and  ask  you  whether,  in  your  own 
experience,  God  has  not  sometimes  given  you  the 
right  to  such  a  hope  ?  Are  there  no  foes  of  your 
youth  which  you  have  conquered  and  left  dead,  pass- 
ing on  to  greater  battles  ?  I  am  not  speaking  of  the 
vices  which  you  have  miserably  left  behind,  merely 
because  the  taste  is  exhausted  and  the  strength  has 
failed  —  vices  which  you  would  take  up  again  if  you 
were  once  more  twenty  years  old.  Those  are  poor 
victories.  Those  are  no  victories  at  all.  But  I  mean 
this :  Whether  you  are  a  better  or  a  worse  man  now 
than  you  were  twenty  years  ago.  Are  there  not  at 
least  some  temptations  to  which  you  yielded  then  to 
which  you  know  that  you  can  never  yield  again?  Are 
there  not  some  meannesses  which  you  once  thought 
glorious  which  now  you  know  are  mean  ?  Are  there 
no  places  where  you  once  stumbled  where  now  you 
know  you  can  walk  firm  ?  I  pity  you  if  there  are  not. 
Other  enemies  which  you  then  never  dreamed  of  j'-ou 
have  since  encountered,  but  those  enemies  are  done 
with.     The  Moabites  and  Midianites  are  before  you 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.   65 

and  around  you,  but  the  Egyptians  are  dead.  And  in 
their  death  your  right  and  duty  are  to  read  the  proph- 
ecy of  the  deatli  of  every  power  which  stands  up 
between  you  and  the  Promised  Land ! 

The  appeal  is  not  only  to  experience.  It  is  to  the 
first  Christian  truth  concerning  man.  I  have  preached 
it  to  you  a  thousand  times.  I  will  preach  it  again 
and  again  until  the  end.  The  great  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  great  truth  of  Christ,  is  that  sin  is  unnat- 
ural and  has  no  business  in  a  human  life.  The  birth 
of  Christ  proclaimed  that  in  one  tone :  His  cross  pro- 
claimed it  in  another!  And  that  which  is  unnat- 
ural is  not  by  any  necessity  permanent.  The  struggle 
of  all  nature  is  against  the  unnatural — to  dislodge 
it  and  cast  it  out.  That  beautiful  struggle  per- 
vades the  world.  It  is  going  on  in  every  clod  of 
earth,  in  every  tree,  in  every  star,  and  in  the  soul  of 
man.  First  to  declare  and  then  to  strengthen  that 
struggle  in  the  soul  of  man  was  the  work  of  Christ. 
That  work  still  lingers  and  fails  of  full  completion, 
but  its  power  is  present  in  the  world.  When  He 
takes  possession  of  a  nature  He  quickens  that  strug- 
gle into  life.  No  longer  can  that  nature  think  it- 
self doomed  to  evil.  Intensely  sensitive  to  feel  the 
presence  of  evil  as  he  never  felt  it  before,  the  Chris- 
tian man  instantly  and  intensely  knows  that  evil  is  a 
stranger  and  an  intruder  in  his  life.  The  wonder  is 
not  that  it  should  some  day  be  cast  out :  the  wonder 
is  that  it  should  ever  have  come  in.  The  victory 
promised  in  the  sinless  Son  of  man  is  already  poten- 
tially attained  in  the  intense  conception  of  its  natural- 
ness.    This  is  Christianity. 


GQ     THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

Is  not  this  the  change  which  you  can  see  coming 
in  the  faces  of  the  sinners  who  meet  Jesus  and  feel 
His  power  in  the  wonderful  stories  which  fill  the 
pages  of  the  Gospels  ?  The  first  thing  which  comes 
to  them,  the  great  thing  which  comes  to  them  all,  is 
a  change  in  their  whole  conception  of  life.  What 
used  to  seem  natural  comes  to  seem  most  unnatural. 
That  which  they  called  unnatural  becomes  so  natural 
that  they  cannot  see  why  it  should  not  immediately 
come  to  pass.  The  rich  young  man's  money  begins 
to  fade  in  his  hand,  and  he  feels  its  tyranny  passing 
away.  The  Magdalen's  face  grows  luminous  with  a 
new  vision  of  purity  as  the  only  true  human  life. 
Bigotry  looks  to  Nicodemus  what  it  really  is.  The 
simple  naturalness  in  the  hope  that  the  children  of 
God  should  live  the  life  of  God  comes  and  folds 
itself  around  each  of  them.  And  in  that  atmos- 
phere of  their  new  life  the  old  life  with  its  old  bond- 
ages dies. 

You  see  how  positive  all  this  is.  And  that,  too, 
seems  to  me  to  be  depicted  in  the  old  Hebrew  story, 
which  we  are  using  for  our  parable.  It  was  on  the 
farther  seashore  of  the  Red  sea  that  the  Egyptian 
'pursuers  of  the  Israelites  lay  dead.  It  was  when  the 
people  of  God  had  genuinely  undertaken  the  journey 
to  the  land  which  God  had  given  them,  that  the 
grasp  of  their  enemy  gave  way  and  the  dead  hands 
(let  them  go.  You  may  fight  with  your  enemy  on  his 
own  ground,  only  trying  to  get  the  immediate  better 
of  him,  and  win  what  he  claims  for  yourself,  and 
your  fight  will  go  on,  more  or  less  a  failure,  more  or 
less  a  victory,  forever.   You  must  go  forth  into  a  new 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  67 

land,  into  the  new  ambition  of  a  higher  life,  and 
then,  when  he  tries  to  follow  you  there,  he  perishes. 

O  selfish  man  !  not  merely  by  trying  not  to  be  sel- 
fish, but  by  entering  into  the  new  joy  of  unselfish 
consecration,  so  only  shall  you  kill  your  selfishness. 
When  you  are  vigorously  trying  to  serve  your  fellow- 
men,  the  last  chance  that  you  will  be  unjust  or  cruel 
to  them  will  disappear.  When  you  are  full  of  enthu- 
siasm for  truth,  the  cold  hands  of  falsehood  will  let 
you  go.  Get  the  Egyptian  off  his  own  ground,  seek 
not  the  same  low  things  by  higher  means ;  seek 
higher  things,  and  the  low  means  will  know  that  they 
cannot  hold  you  their  slave.  They  will  lie  down  and 
die.  And  then  the  pillar  of  fire  and  the  pillar  of 
cloud  will  have  you  for  their  own  and  lead  you  on  in 
your  free  journey. 

With  regard,  then,  to  a  man's  permanent  escape 
from  evil,  may  we  not  say  these  two  things,  —  that  it 
must  come  about  as  the  natural  privilege  of  his  life, 
and  it  must  be  positive  ?  To  the  soul  which  has 
finally  escaped  from  sin  into  the  full  freedom  of  the 
perfect  life,  the  soul  which  has  entered  into  the  celes- 
tial liberty,  must  not  these  two  things  be  clear, — 
first,  that  his  old  dream  of  life  was  a  delusion,  that 
he  was  never  meant  to  be  the  thing  which  he  so 
long  allowed  himself  to  be ;  and,  second,  that  the 
great  interests  of  the  celestial  life,  the  service  of  God 
which  has  there  claimed  the  child  of  God,  makes 
sure  forever  that  there  shall  be  no  return  to  the  old 
servitude  ?  And  what  we  dare  to  believe  shall  there 
in  heaven  come  perfectly,  and  with  reference  to  all 
wickedness,  why  may  we  not  believe  that  here  and 


68     THE   JOGYPTIANS   DEAD   UPON   THE   SEASHORE. 

now  it  may  come  in  its  degree  with  reference  to  some 
special  sin  ?  Know  that  it  is  not  natural  that  you 
should  steal,  that  you  should  lie  ;  get  rid  of  the  first 
awful  assumption  that  it  is  bound  up  with  your  con- 
stitution, cease  to  be  a  weak  fatalist  about  it.  That 
is  the  first  thing.  And  then  launch  bravely  forth 
into  brave  works  of  positive  honesty  and  truth.  In- 
sist that  your  life  shall  not  merely  deny  some  false- 
hood, but  that  it  shall  assert  some  truth.  Then,  not 
till  then,  shall  the  lie  let  you  go,  and  your  soul  count 
it  impossible  ever  again  to  do  —  wonderful,  almost 
incredible,  that  it  ever  should  have  done — what  once 
it  used  to  do  from  day  to  day. 

I  think  that  there  are  few  things  about  our  human 
nature  which  are  more  constantly  marvellous  than 
its  power  of  acclimating  itself  in  moral  and  spiritual 
regions  where  it  once  seemed  impossible  that  it 
should  live  at  all.  The  tree  upon  the  hillside  says : 
"Here  and  here  alone  can  I  live.  Here  my  fathers 
lived  in  all  their  generations.  Into  this  hard  soil 
they  struck  their  roots,  and  drank  their  sustenance 
out  of  its  rocky  depths.  Take  me  down  to  the 
plain  and  I  shall  die."  The  gardener  knows  better. 
He  takes  the  doubting  and  despairing  plant  and 
carries  it,  even  against  its  will,  to  the  broad  valley, 
and  sets  it  where  the  cold  winds  shall  not  smite  it, 
and  where  the  rich  ground  feeds  it  with  luxuriance. 
And  almost  as  they  touch  each  other  the  ground  and 
the  root  claim  one  another,  and  rich  revelations  of  its 
own  possibility  flood  the  poor  plant  and  fill  it  full 
of  marvel  with  itself. 

Of  less  and  less  consequence  and  meaning  seem 


THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE.  69 

to  me  those  easy  things  which  men  are  always  saying 
about  their  own  natures  and  character.  "  I  have  no 
spiritual  capacity,"  says  one.  "  It  is  not  in  me  to  be  a 
saint,"  another  cries.  "  I  have  a  covetous  soul.  I 
cannot  live  except  in  winning  money."  "  I  can  make 
many  sacrifices,  but  I  cannot  give  up  my  drink." 
"  I  can  do  many  things,  but  I  cannot  be  reverent." 
So  the  man  talks  about  himself.  Poor  creature,  does 
he  think  that  he  knows,  down  to  its  centre,  this  won- 
derful humanity  of  his  ?  It  all  sounds  so  plausible 
and  is  so  untrue  !  "  Surely  the  man  must  know  him- 
self and  his  own  limitations."  Why  must  he  ?  How 
can  he  know  what  lurking  power  lies  packed  away 
within  the  never-opened  folds  of  this  inactive  life  ? 
Has  he  ever  dared  to  call  himself  the  child  of  God, 
and  for  one  moment  felt  what  that  involves  ?  Has 
he  ever  attacked  the  task  which  demands  those 
powers  whose  existence  he  denies,  or  tried  to  press 
on  into  the  region  where  those  evil  things  cannot 
breathe  which  he  complacently  declares  are  an  in- 
separable portion  of  his  life  ?  There  is  nothing  on 
earth  more  seemingly  significant  and  more  absolutely 
insignificant  than  men's  judgment  of  their  own  moral 
and  spiritual  limitations. 

When  the  fallacy  has  been  exposed,  when  the  man 
has  become  something  which  he  used  to  go  about  de- 
claring that  it  was  absolutely  impossible  that  he 
should  ever  be,  or  has  cast  finally  away  that  which 
he  has  counted  a  very  part  and  portion  of  his  life,  it  is 
often  very  interesting  to  see  how  he  thinks  of  his  cast- 
off  sin.  He,  if  he  is  a  true  man,  counts  his  escape 
complete,  but  he  never  forgets  his  old  bondage.     He 


lO  THE  EGYPTIANS  DEAD  UPON  THE  SEASHORE. 

is  always  one  whom  God  has  led  "  out  of  the  land  of 
Egypt."  Egypt  is  still  there,  although  he  has  escaped 
from  it.  Egypt  did  not  cease  to  be  when  the  Egyp- 
tians with  whom  he  had  to  do  fell  dead.  Men  are 
still  doing  the  sin  which  has  now  become  impossible 
for  him.  He  understands  those  men  by  his  past, 
while  he  cannot  imagine  himself  sharing  their  life  to- 
day. He  is  full  of  sympathy  with  the  sinner,  which 
is  one  with,  of  the  same  substance  as,  his  security 
against  the  sin.  Pity  and  hopefulness  and  humility 
and  strength  all  blend  into  the  peaceful  and  settled 
composure  of  his  life. 

It  is  a  noble  attitude  towards  a  dead  sin.  You  look 
into  its  dead  face  and  are  almost  grateful  to  it.  Not 
with  a  gratitude  which  makes  you  any  way  more  tol- 
erant of  its  character.  You  hate  it  with  your  heart  — 
but  look !  Has  it  not  given  you  self-knowledge,  and 
made  you  cry  out  to  God  and  set  your  face  towards 
the  new  life  ? 

My  friends,  get  something  done !  Get  something 
done  !  Do  not  go  on  forever  in  idle  skirmishing 
with  the  same  foe.  Realize,  as  you  sit  here,  who 
your  chief  enemy  is,  what  vice  of  mind  or  body, 
what  false  or  foul  habit.  Cry  out  to  God  for 
strength.  Set  your  face  resolutely  to  a  new  life  in 
which  that  vice  shall  have  no  part.  Go  out  and 
leave  it  dead.  Plenty  of  new  battles  and  new  foes, 
but  no  longer  that  battle  and  that  foe !  Get  some- 
thing done !  May  He  who  overcame,  not  merely  for 
Himself  but  for  us  all,  give  you  courage  and  make 
you  sharers  in  His  victory  and  in  the  liberty  which  He 
attained. 


V. 

THE    BATTLE  OF  LIFE. 

*•  For  we  wrestle  not  against  flesh  aad  blood,  but  against  princi- 
palities, against  powers,  against  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this 
world,  against  spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places."  —  Ephesians 
vi.  12. 

"  The  Battle  of  Life  "  is  a  metaphor  which  almost 
all  men  at  some  time  in  their  lives  realize  and  own 
as  true.  It  suggests  a  picture  which  recalls  to  almost 
every  man  his  own  history,  if  his  has  been  at  all  an  ear- 
nest life.  We  may  think  that  it  has  not  been  so  with 
other  men ;  we  may  look  at  some  bright  and  smiling 
life,  and  say  with  something  of  envy,  with  something 
also  almost  like  reproach  in  our  tone,  "Lo,  life  has 
no  battle  for  him !  Behold  how  smooth  and  easy  all 
the  world  has  been  for  him  !  "  The  man  himself 
knows  better.  And  we,  if  we  come  close  to  him,  can 
see  the  scars,  nay,  we  can  hear  the  battle  of  his  life 
still  going  on.  But  whether  we  come  close  enough 
to  him  to  know  the  real  truth  of  his  life  or  not,  we 
know  the  truth  about  our  own.  Life  is  a  battle. 
Forever  on  the  watch  against  our  enemies,  forever 
guarding  our  own  lives,  forever  watching  our  chance 
for  an  attack  upon  the  foe,  —  so  we  all  live  if  we  are 
earnest  men. 

And  this  universal  consciousness  of  battle  is  true 
to  the  figure  by  which  we  illustrate  it  in  this,  — that 


72  THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE. 

it  affects  different  fighters  in  different  ways,  it  in- 
spires them  with  most  various  emotions.  To  one 
man  the  fact  of  the  struggle  of  life  is  a  perpetual 
exhilaration :  upon  another  it  weighs  with  an  almost 
intolerable  oppressiveness.  To  one  man  the  ever- 
sounding  battle  bugle  calling  men  always  to  the 
fight,  brings  a  dismay  which  paralyzes  every  power : 
another  man  it  seems  to  distract  into  the  wildest 
folly,  and  he  rushes  everywhere,  striking  at  random 
at  friend  or  foe.  It  has  no  uniform  effect.  It  catches 
each  man  as  it  finds  him,  and  inspires  him  according 
to  his  character. 

But  metaphors  are  delusive,  and  if  we  cling  too 
long  and  closely  to  them  they  grow  tiresome.  They 
are  very  apt  often  to  blind  us  to  the  need  of  care- 
ful definition  and  discrimination.  This  metaphor,  for 
instance,  —  Life  a  Battle,  —  may  seem  so  satisfactory 
that  it  may  lead  us  to  forget  that  there  are  all  kinds 
of  battles,  that  we  do  not  know  much  about  a  battle 
until  we  understand  who  the  enemy  is  and  what  the 
weapons  are.  Two  tribes  of  savages  hewing  away  at 
each  other  in  the  jungle,  the  host  of  crusaders  con- 
tending with  the  soldiers  of  the  projjhets  on  the 
great  plain  of  Galilee,  the  Swiss  peasants  fighting  for 
freedom  in  their  mountain  fastnesses,  our  soldiers 
struggling  with  rebellion,  —  all  these  are  battles  ;  but 
how  different  they  are!  Evidently,  before  the  old 
metaphor,  "the  Battle  of  Life,"  can  mean  anything 
very  definite  or  practical  to  us,  we  must  open  it  with 
the  sharp  knife  of  a  question.  We  must  ask  who  is 
the  enemy  with  whom  the  battle  of  life  is  being 
fought. 


THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE.  73 

The  answers  which  will  come  are  very  various,  and 
more  than  one  answer  will  be  true.  See  what  some 
of  the  many  answers  are.  The  men  who  are  engaged 
in  any  of  the  hard  elemental  works  by  which  the 
earth  is  subdued  to  the  use  of  man  will  tell  us  that 
human  life  is  one  long  fight  with  nature.  The  sailor 
on  the  sea,  the  farmer  in  the  field,  the  miner  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth,  the  woodman  in  the  forest,  —  all 
of  these  are  wrestling  with  the  outer  forces  of  the 
earth,  and  their  hard  battle  rings  in  the  endless  chorus 
of  axe  and  hammer  which  sounds  through  every  land. 
Then  comes  the  merchant  fighting  with  the  competi- 
tion of  his  brethren.  Then  comes  the  legislator  fight- 
ing  with  the  barbarous  tendencies  which  still  haunt 
the  most  civilized  societies.  Then  come  the  philan- 
thropists fighting  with  abuses  and  ignorance  and 
cruelty.  And  everywhere  there  is  the  man,  hopefully 
or  hopelessl}'",  fighting  with  what  he  calls  his  fate,  — 
the  general  aggregate  of  things  about  him  and  behind 
him  which  seems  set  to  keep  him  down  and  to  impede 
his  way.  The  world  is  full  of  all  these  ideas  of 
battle.  And  then  right  into  the  midst  of  them  steps 
Paul,  with  his  clear,  ringing  Christian  word,  "  What 
are  you  fighting  with?  Do  j^ou  ask  that?"  he  says. 
"  Lo,  I  can  tell  you.  You  are  fighting  with  great 
evil  principles  and  powers.  You  are  fighting  with 
forces  of  wickedness  which  come  into  this  world  from 
depths  beyond  our  human  nature.  Obstinate  nature, 
the  rivalry  of  men,  imperfect  institutions,  cruel  hab- 
its, all  those  are  ugly  enemies,  but  the  real  enemy  is 
Badness  itself.  The  real  fight  is  with  that."  Surely 
there   is   something  very   sharp    and  ringing  in   his 


74  THE  BATTLE   OF  LIFE. 

answer.     To  find  out  what  he  means  by  it,  if  we  can, 
will  be  the  purpose  of  my  sermon. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  of  what  Paul  meant 
when  he  first  used  the  word.  His  thought  is  per- 
fectly distinct  and  clear.  He  cries  to  his  Ephesians, 
"  You  are  fighting  with  principalities  and  powers, 
against  the  world  rulers  of  this  darkness,  against 
spiritual  wickedness  in  the  heavenly  regions,  in  the 
sky  or  air."  They  are  lofty  words,  and  they  are  very 
definite.  He  is  thinking  of  evil  spirits.  He  believes 
distinctly  in  a  universe  all  full  of  unseen  forces.  The 
sky  was  full  of  them.  They  were  about  us  all  the 
time.  As  some  of  them  were  the  friends,  so  others  of 
them  were  the  enemies,  of  our  souls  and  our  best  life. 
How  wide  that  faith  has  been  among  mankind  !  How 
deeply  it  is  imprinted  on  the  pages  of  the  Bible ! 
How  it  has  been  allowed  to  melt  and  fade  away  out 
of  the  belief  of  hosts  of  people,  even  of  those  who 
read  the  Bible  !  And  the  reason,  it  seems  to  me, 
why  the  belief  in  a  world  of  unseen  forces  with  which 
we  have  to  do,  which  has  to  do  with  us,  —  the  reason 
why  the  belief  in  good  and  evil  spirits  has  so  faded 
away  out  of  men's  thoughts,  is  not  any  essential  un- 
reasonableness in  the  belief  itself.  Nor  is  it  merely 
the  tyranny  of  the  visible  world  over  men's  senses 
and  through  them  over  men's  minds.  It  is,  in  large 
part,  the  fact  that  very,  very  often  the  believers  in  a 
universe  of  unseen  spirits  have  not  had  St.  Paul's 
loftiness  and  wisdom,  but  have  made  this  unseen 
world  a  field  for  witchcraft  and  magic  and  the  play 
of  influences  which  the  common  moral  sense  of  man- 
kind has  not  been  able  to  understand.     St.  Paul  be- 


THE  BATTLE  OF  LIFE.  75 

lieved  in  spirits  good  and  had.  The  heaiity  of  his 
belief  in  them  was  that,  different  as  they  might 
be  from  us  in  the  conditions  of  their  life,  they  still 
belonged  to  the  same  great  moral  system  to  which 
he  belonged.  The  good  spirits  were  not  to  be 
propitiated,  and  the  evil  spirits  were  not  to  be  dis- 
armed by  magic  and  incantations.  He  who  did  right- 
eousness called  to  himself  the  most  mysterious 
strength  of  the  unseen  worlds.  He  and  he  alone  was 
safe  against  the  assaults  of  the  spirits  of  darkness. 
This  appears,  you  know,  in  the  very  passage  from 
which  I  take  my  text.  "  Because  we  wrestle  against 
these  invisible  enemies,  therefore  take  unto  you  the 
whole  armor  of  God,  having  your  loins  girt  about 
with  truth,  and  having  on  the  breastplate  of  right- 
eousness." When  we  think  how  generally  the  be- 
lievers in  a  world  of  spiritual  forces  have  grown 
fantastic,  and  have  tried  to  influence  the  forces  of 
that  unseen  world  by  enchantments  which  had  no 
moral  meaning,  we  see  how  much  more  dignified 
and  lofty  is  St.  Paul's  position.  To  him  goodness, 
morality,  was  the  first  condition  of  all  life.  Here  on 
this  earth  or  anywhere  beyond  the  stars,  to  be  good 
must  be  the  first  condition  of  all  strength.  He  who 
was  good,  he  who  was  trying  to  be  good,  entered 
thereby  into  friendly  confederation  with  all  the  noble 
forces  of  the  universe,  and  bid  defiance  to  all  the  evil 
powers  of  the  sky  and  air.  For  him  all  good  beings 
fought ;  against  his  simple  righteousness  all  evil  be- 
ings would  beat  themselves  in  vain,  and  ultimately 
must  go  down  and  fail,  here  or  beyond  the  stars. 
That  is  a  noble  faith.     In  the  simplicity  and  grandeur 


76  THE  BATTLE  OF  LIFE. 

of  a  faith  like  that,  man  will  some  day  come  once 
more  to  the  now  almost  lost  belief  in  the  connection 
of  his  life  with  unseen  spiritual  powers.  There  is  an 
ineradicable  disposition  in  the  human  soul  to  think 
that  this  one  little  world  is  not  apart  from  all  the 
rest.  And  Scripture  finds  its  sanction  in  the  best 
human  instincts  when  it  says  that  he  who  is  doing 
righteousness  is  on  the  side  of  the  great  currents  of 
universal  life,  and  has  not  only  God  but  all  good 
spirits  for  his  friends.  I  have  wandered  a  little  from 
our  subject,  but  yet  it  all  leads  on  to  this  idea  on 
which  we  want  to  dwell,  that  whether  we  fully 
realize  St.  Paul's  description  of  the  evil  spirits  with 
whom  the  Christian  has  to  fight,  or  whether  his  ene- 
mies present  themselves  to  us  rather  as  abstract  prin- 
ciples to  which  we  do  not  attach  personalit}^  as  clearly 
as  St.  Paul  did,  still  it  is  something  invisible,  some- 
thing spiritual,  something  behind  and  deeper  than 
the  mere  outward  forms  of  things,  within  which  the 
real  difficulties  of  life  lie,  and  with  which  the  true 
man  must  do  battle. 

In  many  ways  men  come  to  the  discovery  of  this 
truth,  often  in  ways  that  are  full  of  pain  and  dis- 
appointment. Some  brave  reformer  has  struggled 
against  a  vicious  institution,  and  by  and  by  has 
succeeded  in  breaking  it  down.  The  great  re- 
form is  carried.  Henceforth  there  is  to  be  no 
more  traffic  in  slaves.  Henceforth  the  sale  of  drink 
shall  be  prohibited.  Henceforth  corruption  is  not 
to  make  prizes  out  of  public  office.  How  often  has 
the  successful  reformer  stood  among  the  ruins  of 
the  demolished   institution,  and   there,  just   in   the 


THE  BATTLE  OF   LIFE.  77 

first  enthusiasm  of  his  joy,  been  suddenly  smitten 
with  dismay  and  felt  the  shout  of  triumph  perish 
on  his  lips ;  for  lo  !  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  ruined 
institution  rose  a  spectre,  which  he  saw  was  the 
unkilled  soul  of  the  dead  institution,  and  which, 
even  as  he  gazed  upon  it,  began  to  put  itself  forth 
in  some  new  outward  shape,  to  create  for  itself  a 
new  body,  and  to  look  defiance  on  the  poor  dis- 
couraged fighter,  who  saw  how  all  his  work  had  to 
be  done  over  again  from  the  beginning.  Happy  and 
truly  brave  is  the  reformer  who  is  not  disheartened, 
but  enlightened,  by  that  sight,  and  who  does  begin 
again  with  unabated  zeal,  striking  with  ever  new 
vigor  at  each  new  abuse,  but  learning  ever  more 
and  more  deeply  that  not  in  evil  institutions,  but 
in  evil  principles,  does  the  real  evil  lie ;  and  so  ex- 
pecting to  see  slavery  appear  in  one  new  form  after 
another  until  the  soul  of  the  community  is  free,  and 
intemperance  revive  in  one  new  device  after  another 
until  the  soul  of  the  community  is  sober,  and  cor- 
ruption reassert  its  power  in  one  new  shape  after 
another  till  the  soul  of  the  community  is  honest. 
When  he  has  come  to  that  knowledge,  then  the 
reformer  settles  down  undiscouraged  to  the  heart  of 
his  battle,  and  summons  the  loftiest  spiritual  powers 
to  his  aid,  and  perseveres  to  death.  And  when  death 
comes,  and  he  goes,  leaving  his  long  work  still 
undone,  the  very  sight  of  the  reality  of  spiritual 
forces  which  he  wins  as,  dying,  he  comes  nearer  to 
their  home  seems  often  to  make  him  more  sure  of 
the  final  victory  just  when  his  tired  hands  are  drop- 
ping their  weapons  ;  and  he  dies  more  than  content. 


78  THE   BATTLE   OP  LIFE. 

The  same  truth  comes  in  much  the  same  way  to 
the  champion  of  sound  doctrine  and  a  true  belief. 
"  Break  down  this  heresy  and  then  men  will  have 
faith,"  so  cries  the  lover  of  God's  truth  as  he  sits 
down  in  his  calm  study  to  show  how  destitute  of 
reason  is  the  last  superstition  of  the  day.  Perhaps 
he  perfectly  succeeds.  Perhaps  he  tears  the  poor 
flimsy  argument  to  tatters,  and  leaves  the  fanatic 
or  the  blasphemer  not  a  word  to  say  for  his  poor 
fantasy.  And  then  the  weary  controversialist  goes 
to  his  well-earned  rest,  and  wakes  up  in  the  morning 
to  find  the  sun  shining  on  a  whole  city  full  of  new 
unbeliefs  and  misbeliefs,  in  which  the  spirit  of  faith- 
lessness has  embodied  itself  during  the  night,  and 
which  stand  there  facing  the  sunrise  with  their 
bright  new  pinnacles  and  spires,  which  have  taken 
possession  of  the  sky  as  if  they  meant  to  shine  there 
forever.  Happy  and  brave  and  wise  the  champion 
of  the  faith  who  is  not  discouraged,  but  enlightened, 
by  that  sight,  and  who  goes  out  again,  ready  to 
strike  down  and  disprove  each  new  and  special  error 
as  it  rises,  but  who  grows  always  more  and  more 
eager  to  change  the  deeper  state,  the  heart  and 
temper  of  the  life  about  him,  —  to  bring  in  faith  for 
faithlessness,  to  give  a  true  and  deep,  and  true  and 
healthy,  tone  to  life,  —  so  that  this  dreary  work  of 
ever  disproving  fantasy  after  fantasy  need  not  go 
on  forever ;  but  some  day,  —  however  far  away,  — 
some  day  the  time  shall  come  when  out  of  the  heart 
of  a  healthily  believing  humanity  nothing  but  true 
and  healthy  faith  can  grow. 


THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE.  79 

I  turn  back  for  an  instant  here  to  what  I  said 
about  Paul  and  his  belief  in  good  and  evil  spirits, 
and  about  the  current  disbelief  in  all  such  beings 
which  prevails  to-day.  Is  not  the  method  of  the 
true  belief  indicated  by  what  I  have  just  now  been 
saying?  How  shall  the  field  be  swept  clear  of  all 
the  paraphernalia  of  ghost  stories  and  the  false 
supernatural  which  brings  its  double  harm,  degrad- 
ing the  souls  that  believe  in  it,  and  hardening  into 
blank  materialism  the  souls  whom  its  absurdities  or 
enormities  drive  into  disbelief  ?  You  may  prove  one 
impostor  after  another  to  be  false.  You  may  dem- 
onstrate beyond  all  question  that  this  or  that 
phenomenon  has  nothing  supernatural  about  it,  but 
you  will  work  in  vain  until  you  strike  right  at  the 
root  of  all  the  folly  by  taking  Paul's  ground,  and 
insisting  that  whatever  unseen  presences  there  may 
be  about  us,  we  and  they  and  all  the  universe 
must  be  subject  to  the  eternal,  universal  sway  of 
moral  law ;  that  therefore  the  only  way  to  really  win 
the  good  and  to  really  disarm  the  evil,  from  whatever 
region  of  the  universe  they  make  attacks  upon  us,  is 
to  live  nobly,  truly,  purely.  When  men  have  been 
led  to  think  thus  of  the  world  of  spirits,  then  I  do 
believe  that  we  shall  see  a  great  restoral  of  healthy 
belief  in  spiritual  presences.  The  fantastic  and  fit- 
ful, unreal  and  immoral,  way  of  tliinking  and  feel- 
ing about  them  will  disappear,  and  calmly,  quietly, 
without  fright,  without  fanaticism,  with  a  great 
deepening  of  the  sense  of  the  moral  criticalness  of 
living,  men  will  know  that  the  universe  is  larger 
than  this  little   earth,  and  that  for  a  human  creat- 


80  THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE. 

ure   to  be  good  or  bad  means  something  out   into 
unknown,  unknowable  regions  of  spiritual  life. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  way  in  which  the  knowledge 
of  one  truth,  that  the  real  struggle  of  life  is  not  with 
institutions  or  creeds,  but  with  moral  and  spiritual  dis- 
positions, of  which  institutions  and  creeds  are  only 
the  expressions,  —  the  way  in  which  this  knowledge 
comes  to  the  reformer  when  his  work  against  a  bad 
institution  or  a  false  creed  has  succeeded  and  he  has 
conquered  it.  Not  less  important  is  the  power  which 
that  knowledge  may  have  in  him  while  his  hot  fight 
is  still  going  on.  I  hope  that  I  speak  to  some  men 
and  women  who  count  it  their  duty  and  their  right 
to  set  themselves  against  the  wrongs  and  evils  of  the 
world,  and  to  do  everything  they  can  to  set  them 
right.  They  cannot  be  unaware  of  what  the  dangers 
of  the  agitation  against  evil  are.  To  let  the  battle 
against  wickedness  and  cruelty  pass  over  into  a  per- 
sonal hatred  of  the  wicked  and  cruel  man,  and  ex- 
haust itself  in  personal  attacks  ou  him  for  other  tilings 
besides  his  wickedness,  —  that  is  the  constant  peril. 
How  often  does  the  hot  agitator  need  these  calm, 
strong  words :  "  Not  against  flesh  and  blood,  but 
against  principalities  and  powers,  and  the  world-spirit 
of  darkness,  and  the  evil  that  is  in  the  air."  I  know 
the  answer  that  will  come  :  "  Evil  incorporates  it- 
self in  men.  How  can  you  strike  out  the  evil  with- 
out beating  down  the  men  in  whom  it  is  embodied?" 
But  surely  no  such  statement  as  that,  which  is  most 
absolutely  true,  can  be  stretched  wide  enough  to 
cover  the  personal  hatred,  the  wilful  or  careless  mis- 
representation, the  petty  spite,  with  which  the  earnest 


'the  battle  of  life.  81 

advooate  of  some  cause  which  he  thought  indubitably 
right  has  very  often  followed  up  the  man  upon  the 
other  side  whom  he  believed  of  course  to  be  indubita- 
bly wrong.  Just  see  what  some  of  the  personal  dis- 
advantages of  such  a  disposition  are.  First,  it  puts  it 
absolutely  out  of  the  angry  partisan's  power,  in  case 
he  is  not  wholly  right,  to  get  any  advantage  or  cor- 
rection from  the  opposite  light  in  which  his  opponent 
sees  the  same  transaction  which  he  thinks  so  wrong ; 
second,  it  robs  the  furious  hater  of  the  chance  to 
learn  charity  and  pei'sonal  consideration,  for  of  course 
the  chance  to  think  tolerantly  of  a  man  who  differs 
from  us  comes  to  us  when  we  differ  from  him,  and  if, 
the  moment  that  we  differ  from  him,  we  begin  to  hate 
him,  it  is  as  if  we  shut  up  the  door  of  one  of  our  best 
school-rooms  and  turned  the  key  of  prejudice  upon 
it ;  and,  third,  yet  again  it  makes  turbid  and  heavy 
and  dull  that  stream  of  simple  indignation  against 
evil  and  love  for  righteousness  wliich,  when  it  is  abso- 
lutely fresh  and  pure,  is  the  most  strong  and  persist- 
ent power  in  the  world.  These  are  the  reasons  why 
it  is  a  sad  loss  when  the  fighter  with  wickedness  turns 
his  struggle  against  wickedness  into  angry  attacks  on 
men  against  whom  perhaps  their  wickedness  has  first 
provoked  liim,  but  whom  he  has  come  now  to  hate 
for  themselves.  This  was  the  spirit  of  our  Lord's  dis- 
ciples when  they  wanted  to  call  down  fire  on  the  vil- 
lage of  Samaria.  This  was  Luther's  spirit  when  at 
Marburg  he  lost  sight  of  the  simple  fight  with  error 
and  plunged  into  a  personal  attack  on  Zwingle.  It 
is  the  danger  of  all  earnest  men.  It  seems  sometimes 
to  be  so  inseparable  from  earnestness  that  the  world 


82  THE  BATTLE   OF  1,IFE. 

thinks  that  it  must  not  call  it  a  vice  or  take 
any  note  of  it  in  the  earnest  man.  But  no  really 
earnest  man  can  be  so  self-indulgent.  Ever  he  must 
struggle  to  know  who  his  true  enemy  is,  and  to  fight 
finally  with  him  alone.  With  wickedness  we  may  be 
unraitigatedly  indignant.  We  may  hate  it  with  all 
our  hearts.  Towards  it  there  is  no  chance,  there  is 
no  right,  of  indulgence  or  consideration.  But  with 
the  wicked  man,  because  he  is  both  man  and  wicked- 
ness, we  may  be  at  once  full  of  anger  and  full  of  love, 
and  out  of  the  spirit  of  the  highest  justice,  both  to 
him  and  to  ourselves,  insist  always  that  it  shall  be  the 
wickedness  and  not  the  man  that  we  hate  ! 

Now  let  me  turn  away  from  words  which  may  ap- 
pear to  be  addressed  only  to  certain  classes  of  my 
hearers,  and  let  me  try  to  speak  of  things  which  must 
concern  us  all.  Inside  of  all  the  other  battles  we  are 
fighting,  there  is  the  battle  with  ourselves.  Inside  of 
the  battle  with  the  world  for  the  world,  which  the 
great  champions  of  righteousness  are  fighting  in  their 
great  way,  and  which  you  and  I,  I  hope,  are  fighting 
in  our  little  way,  there  lies  the  battle  which  every 
true  man  is  always  fighting  with  himself  for  himself 
—himself  the  hostile  enemy,  himself  the  precious 
prize.  Oh,  how  real  sometimes  all  that  must  become 
to  the  great  workers  for  mankind  !  While  Howard 
is  travelling  all  over  Europe,  from  prison  to  prison, 
while  Clarkson  has  his  hand  upon  the  fetters  of  the 
slave,  while  Francke  is  gathering  his  orphans  around 
him  and  struggling  with  their  ignorance,  while  Gar- 
rison is  striving  to  free  the  slave,  sometimes  the 
heart  of  each  of  them  must  have  grown  sick   and 


THE   BATTLE  OF   LIFE.  83 

faint  with  the  freshly  heard  sound  of  its  own  inner 
conflict;  sometimes  each  of  them  must  have  turned 
aside  and  shut  the  door  upon  all  the  tumult  of  the 
world  and  left  the  great  cause  for  an  hour  to  take 
care  of  itself,  while  he  fought  with  himself  for  him- 
self, —  with  himself  his  own  enemy,  for  himself  his 
own  prize.  There  are  verses  enough,  you  know,  in 
St.  Paul's  Epistles  which  let  us  see  that  struggle  with 
himself  eroins;  on  all  the  time  underneath  the  other 
struggle  with  the  men  of  Jerusalem  and  Athens. 
While  the  foreign  war  was  raging,  the  home  country 
also  was  all  up  in  arms.  How  such  men  must  have 
thought  often  within  themselves  that  the  foreign  war 
would  be  as  nothing,  would  be  a  very  easy  thing, 
if  only  there  were  peace  at  home.  "  I  could  convert 
the  world  easily,"  the  missionary  must  often  find 
himself  saying,  "  if  only  I  had  a  solid  ground  to 
stand  upon,  if  only  my  own  life  were  not  all  soft  and 
weak  with  sin  and  doubt."  And  sometimes,  too,  the 
other  thought  must  come,  "  What  right  have  I  to  be 
busying  myself  with  the  world's  miseries  while  all 
this  unrest  is  tumultuous  within  me  ?  Why  is  it  not 
best  to  shut  in  myself  upon  myself  and  fight  my  own 
battle  out  before  I  meddle  with  the  bigger  battle  ?  " 

Such  thoughts  come  naturally ;  but  really  it  is 
good,  no  doubt,  that  the  two  strifes,  the  outer  and 
the  inner,  the  strife  with  self  and  the  strife  with  the 
world's  sin,  should  go  on  together.  The  man  who 
knew  no  enemy  within  himself,  who  was  so  absorbed 
in  fighting  with  the  world's  sin  that  he  grew  uncon 
scions  of  his  own  inner  life,  by  and  by  would  become 
arrogant  and  superficial.     Such  men  the  world  lias 


84  THE    BATTJ.K    OF   LIFE. 

often  seen  among  its  philanthropists.  The  man  who 
is  totally  wrapped  up  in  the  war  within  him,  the  war 
with  himself  for  his  own  life,  grows  selfish  and  grows 
morbid.  The  two  must  go  on  together.  Each  keeps 
the  other  healthy  and  true.  Fight  with  your  own 
sin,  and  let  that  fight  keep  you  humble  and  full  of 
sympathy  when  you  go  out  into  the  world  and 
strike  at  the  sin  of  which  the  world  is  full.  Fight 
with  the  world's  sin,  and  let  the  needs  of  that  fight 
make  you  aware  of  how  much  is  wrong,  and  make 
you  eager  that  everything  shall  be  right  within  your- 
self. Here  is  the  balance  and  mutual  ministry  of 
self-care  and  world-care  which  makes  the  truest  man 
the  healthiest  pliilanthropist. 

Surely  it  always  must  be  full  of  meaning,  that 
Christ  Himself,  before  He  began  his  struggles  with  the 
Pharisees  and  Scribes,  went  out  into  the  desert  and 
struggled  with  Himself.  It  must  have  been  present 
with  Him  ever  afterwards,  that  wrestling  with  the 
evil  spirit  and  all  the  knowledge  of  Himself  which  it 
called  out.  Many  a  time  the  wilfulness,  and  narrow- 
ness, and  selfishness  which  He  saw  in  the  faces  which 
surrounded  Him  in  some  crowd  in  the  temple  must 
have  been  clearer  to  Him  and  easier  to  understand, 
because  they  were  just  the  passions  which  had  tried 
to  take  possession  of  His  own  heart,  and  failed,  dur- 
ing those  long  terrible  days  in  the  dark  wilderness. 
And  oh !  my  friends,  there  is  no  way  in  which  what- 
ever personal  struggles  with  faithlessness  and  sin  we 
may  have  gone  through  can  be  made  to  keep  their 
freshness  and  power,  and  at  the  same  time  be  kept 
from  becoming  a  source  of  morbid  wretchedness,  no 


THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE.  85 

way  that  is  half  so  efficient  as  that  they  should  con- 
stantly be  called  on  to  light  up  for  us  the  same  sort 
of  struggles  in  other  men,  and  give  us  the  power  to 
help  them  with  intelligence  and  sympathy.  Demand 
that  lofty  service  of  every  deep  experience  through 
which  you  pass.  Demand  that  it  shall  help  you 
understand  and  aid  the  battles  of  your  brethren, 
and  then  the  devils  of  memory  which  haunt  your 
life  may  be  turned  into  strong  angels,  by  whose  help 
you  may  do  the  will  of  God,  and  be  in  some  small 
way  the  saviour  of  mankind. 

Our  allusion  to  the  conflict  of  Jesus  in  the  desert 
reminds  us  of  how,  to  this  internal  strife  whicli  a 
man  carries  on  with  his  own  nature,  St.  Paul's  de- 
scription of  the  nature  of  all  spiritual  conflict  espe- 
cially applies.  "  Not  against  flesh  and  blood  "  was  the 
wrestling  of  Jesus  always.  It  was  with  the  sin  of  Cai- 
aphas  and  Herod,  not  with  Caiaphas  and  Herod,  that 
He  strove.  But  here  especially  in  the  desert,  it  was 
directly  with  the  spirit  of  evil,  and  not  with  any  of  its 
outward  forms  or  symbols,  that  He  struggled.  And 
is  it  not  true  that  just  in  proportion  as  all  men's 
strifes  with  their  own  selves  grow  serious  and  earnest, 
they  are  always  pressing  in  and  in,  and  growing  to 
be  less  and  less  struggles  with  the  mere  forms  and 
symbols  of  wrong-doing,  more  and  more  profound 
contests  with  our  own  true  selves  and  with  our  sins? 
Some  young  man  here  begins  the  noble  work  of  try- 
ing to  be  a  better  man.  He  knows  that  it  is  no  mere 
hoisting  of  holiday  sails  and  idly  slipping  under 
pleasant  breezes  into  another  life.  He  knows  that  he 
has  got  to  fight.     But  fight  with  what  — with  whom  ? 


86  THE  BATTLE  OF   LIFE. 

Where  is  his  enemy  ?  And  then  see  how  he  begins  on 
the  outside  and  works  inward  as  the  combat  deepens. 
First  the  enemy  seems  to  be  in  the  circnmstances 
and  conditions  of  his  life.  He  fights  with  those. 
He  gives  up  the  business  that  is  always  full  of  temp- 
tation. He  breaks  off  the  acquaintance  that  keeps 
him  in  the  low  atmosphere.  He  moves  out  of  the 
house  where  the  wicked  people  live.  He  abandons 
the  reading  which  kept  certain  bad  thoughts  before 
his  mind.  All  that  is  good ;  but  when  he  stands  with 
all  that  done,  the  sense  comes  over  him  that  his  en- 
emy is  not  conquered  yet.  He  has  only  stripped 
himself  for  the  fight.  The  real  fight  has  not  yet  be- 
gun. 

Then  he  goes  farther  in.  More  personal,  more  a 
part  of  himself  than  his  associations  and  his  circum- 
stances, are  his  habits.  If  a  man's  circumstances  are 
like  his  clothes,  his  habits  are  like  his  very  body. 
With  these  habits  he  begins  to  wrestle  next.  He 
will  not  drink ;  he  will  not  swear ;  he  will  not  lie. 
All  that  is  very  good  again.  Most  good.  But  once 
more,  when  all  this  is  accomplished  and  the  bad 
habits  are  all  cast  away,  still  the  man  stands  aware 
that  his  self  is  not  conquered.  That  mysterious  cen- 
tre of  his  being  which  is  the  He  that  thinks  and  feels 
and  not  merely  does  good  or  bad,  but  is  good  or  bad, 
is  the  man  ;  that  still  is  in  deep  conflict  with  itself. 
The  sin  which  is  internal  strife  is  not  yet  cast  out 
there. 

And  then  comes  very  often  something  else,  with 
which  in  these  days  we  are  most  familiar.  The  man 
who  has  found  that  the  real  struggle  of  his  life  is  not 


THE  BATTLE   OF  LIFE.  87 

with  his  associations  and  is  not  with  his  habits,  often 
looks  back  to  his  hereditation,  as  he  calls  it.  How 
familiar  that  long  word  has  grown  with  certain  very 
estimable  kinds  of  people!  "I  have  inherited  all 
these  bad  dispositions.  I  have  to  fight  with  all  that 
my  forefathers  have  been.  Pity  me !  pity  me !  for 
my  dead  ancestors  are  too  much  for  my  living  will." 
So  the  poor  victim  cries  as  he  feebly  settles  himself 
down  to  what  he  holds  beforehand  is  a  losing  fight. 
It  has  its  own  despair  already  in  itself,  this  hopeless 
struggle  with  hereditation  which,  as  so  many  of  our 
teachers  now  depict  it,  is  so  peculiarly,  so  literally,  a 
wrestling  against  flesh  and  blood. 

These  are  the  several  outer  circles.  The  fight  in 
them  comes  to  seem  either  useless  or  hopeless.  And 
then  at  last,  if  the  man  is  thoroughly  in  earnest,  then 
at  last  the  man  gets  into  the  heart  and  centre  of  it 
all.  Not  in  his  circumstances,  not  in  his  habits,  not 
in  his  hereditations,  but  in  himself,  in  a  heart  ready  to 
give  itself  up  to  the  worse  instead  of  to  the  better 
powers  of  the  world,  in  a  soul  that  loves  baseness,  fri- 
volity, and  falseness,  there  lies  the  real  enemy.  Oh, 
the  great  strength  which  comes  when  that  discovery  is 
made !  And,  feeling  that  now  at  last  the  real  battle  has 
begun,  the  man  solemnly,  solidly  settles  himself  down 
to  the  conquest  of  himself.  The  army  which  has 
carried  by  storm  one  fortification  after  another  and 
found  that  it  has  only  gained  possession  of  an  out- 
post, more  or  less  insignificant,  now  sits  down  before 
the  central  citadel  and  the  real  siege  begins.  Then 
comes  the  true  calling  up  of  all  the  powers.  Then 
comes  humility,  and  by  humility  self-understanding, 


88  THE   BATTLE   OF   LIFE. 

and  in  aelf-understanding  strength.  Then  comes 
that  earnest  cry  for  God's  help  which  always  brings 
its  answer.  Then  comes  the  giving  of  the  soul's  own 
weakness  into  the  abundant  strength  of  Christ. 
Then  comes  the  great  reality  of  prayer.  All  of 
these,  when  the  man  has  at  last  got  to  the  centre  of 
his  sin,  and  is  at  last  fighting  with  himself  for  his  own 
soul. 

My  friends,  do  you  know  the  meaning  of  all  that  ? 
Are  you  fighting  that  battle  for  self-conquest?  If 
you  are,  you  know  with  what  a  true  exhilaration  that 
which  seems  such  a  cruel  and  unnatural  necessity  of 
life  may  occupy  and  inspire  the  soul.  Almost  with  a 
shout  the  man  exclaims,  "  I  will  subdue  myself  for 
goodness  and  for  God  I "  And  though  no  shout  is 
heard,  though  men  beside  him  do  not  hear  a  sound, 
though  the  battlefield  is  in  some  inmost  secret  cham- 
ber of  his  most  secluded  life,  though  the  fairest 
flowers  of  his  own  self-content  are  being  torn  to 
pieces  by  the  wrestler's  feet,  yet  still  there  is  —  do  not 
you  know  it,  many  of  you  ?  —  a  deep,  strong,  solemn 
joy  as  the  night  draws  nearer  to  the  day,  and  the  self 
with  which  we  fight  grows  weaker,  and  the  self  for 
which  we  fight  grows  freer,  —  a  joy  deep  and  strong 
and  solemn  with  which  no  other  pleasure  in  human 
living  can  compare. 

And  also  there  grows  up  a  great  charity  and  hope 
for  every  other  man  who  is  fighting  the  good  fight 
with  his  sins  — a  charity  and  hope  which  is  alone 
reward  enough  for  all  our  pain  ! 

May  God  lead  all  of  us  speedily  in,  through  all  the 
outer  struggles,  to  this  inmost  fight  of  all !     May  we 


THE  BATTLE   OF   LIFE.  89 

btgin  it  now,  and  never  end  it  till  our  sin  is  dead ! 
May  the  Captain  of  our  salvation  be  our  leader  and 
our  strength !  May  we  be  full  of  courage,  because  the 
battle  which  we  fight  is  notour  own  alone,  but  God's, 
and  at  the  last  may  we  be  conquerors  in  Him  I 


VI. 

THE  DIGNITY  AND  GREATNESS  OF  FAITH. 

"  No  man  can  say  that  Jesus  is  the  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost." 
—  I.  Cor.  xii.  3. 

These  words  must  mean  their  deepest,  or  else  they 
cannot  mean  anything  for  us.  They  were  written 
long  ago  when  Christianity  was  new.  To  say,  then, 
that  Jesus  Christ  was  the  divine  Lord  of  the  world 
was  something  different  in  the  demand  it  made  upon 
a  man's  powers  and  character  from  what  it  is  to-day. 
In  some  respects  it  must  have  been  much  harder  then 
than  now  :  in  some  respects  much  easier.  We  cannot 
tell  wholly,  I  suppose,  what  Paul's  verse  meant  in  the 
ears  of  the  Corinthians  who  heard  it  first.  But  when 
we  bring  his  words  over  to  our  own  time  and  try  to 
realize  them  now,  it  is  evident  that  they  mean  nothing 
unless  they  mean  their  deepest.  "  No  man  can  sa}^ 
that  Jesus  is  the  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  Evi- 
dently it  is  not  true  that  a  divine  help  is  needed 
simply  to  declare  as  an  article  of  one's  creed,  a  con- 
viction of  one's  mind,  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Master  of 
the  world.  Thousands  of  people  are  doing  that  all 
the  time,  and  doing  it  evidently  by  themselves,  not 
"  by  the  Holy  Ghost "  at  all,  often  saying  the  great 
words  wilfully,  obstinately,  controversially,  with  a 
spirit  and  an  impulse  so  essentially  earthly  that  we 


THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.        91 

know  they  did  not  come  from  heaven ;  with  a  vehe- 
mence so  unholy  and  unspiritual  that  we  know  it  is 
not  the  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Evidently  it  cannot 
be  the  mere  saying  of  the  words  or  the  mere  accept- 
ance of  the  fact  that  proves  a  divine  influence.  It 
must  be  the  saying  of  the  words,  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord," 
filled  with  the  most  earnest  faith  and  the  richest  ex- 
perience ;  the  saying  of  them  by  a  man  to  whom  they 
represent  the  deepest  fact  and  the  most  powerful  im- 
pulse of  his  life.  It  must  mean  this,  and,  if  it  does, 
then  it  involves  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  urgent 
subjects  of  which  we  can  think  or  speak.  That  sub- 
ject is  the  dignity  and  greatness  of  a  faith  in  Christ. 
It  is  only,  so  says  St.  Paul,  it  is  only  by  an  action 
which  outgoes  his  own  powers  and  shares  the  strength 
of  God  that  a  man  is  able  to  own  Christ  as  the  master 
of  his  life. 

The  Dignity  and  Greatness  of  faith !  There  are  two 
classes  of  people,  very  different  from  one  another, 
both  of  whom  deny  the  proposition  which  I  have 
announced  and  of  which  I  wish  to  speak.  The  first 
denier  is  the  ordinary  flippant  church-member  or  par- 
tisan controversialist,  who  treats  faith  as  if  it  were 
one  of  the  easiest  and  most  casual  functions  of  a 
human  life,  and  a  confession  of  faith  as  if  it  were  an 
indifferent  sort  of  action  to  be  slipped  in  almost  any- 
where, between  two  other  acts  of  wholly  other  kinds. 
Such  a  man  dishonors  faith  by  the  trivialness  with 
which  he  treats  it.  His  denial  of  its  dignity  and 
greatness  is  a  practical  one,  and  while  he  makes  it 
he  may  be  all  the  time  talking  the  grandest  talk 
about  the  faith   which   all  his  life   discredits.     The 


A, 


92       THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH. 

other  denier  is  more  serious,  and  his  denial  deals  witli 
the  whole  idea  and  theory  of  faith.  Many  and  many 
men  there  are  to-day  who  most  deliberately  hold  and 
teach  that  the  idea  of  man's  depending  upon  a  loftier 
power  than  himself  is  a  delusion  of  human  immatur- 
ity, that  it  belongs  to  the  infancy  of  the  human  mind, 
that  for  the  world  or  for  any  man  to  give  it  up  and 
count  the  human  life  sufficient  for  itself  is  a  distinct 
advance,  that  faith  is  fetich-worship  gradually  passing 
out  into  the  light,  slowly  becoming  that  full  enlightr 
enment  of  man  in  which,  when  it  becomes  complete, 
there  shall  be  no  longer  any  such  thing  possible 
as  faith.  In  protest  against  both  denials,  the  prac- 
tical denial  of  the  frivolous  communicant  in  our 
churches,  and  the  dogmatic  denial  of  the  positivist 
philosopher,  we  want  to  assert  the  dignity  and  great- 
ness of  faith.  I  would  like  to  think  that  as  I  speak 
I  see  two  faces  before  me  —  one  the  easy,  careless 
face  of  the  commonplace  professor  of  religion.  Look- 
ing into  his  trifling  eyes  I  would  like  to  say :  "  Poor 
soul,  this  earthly,  uninspired  thing  of  yours  is  not 
real  faith.  No  man  can  have  real  faith  but  by  the 
Holy  Spirit."  The  other  face  shall  be  the  earnest, 
puzzled,  eager  face  of  the  young  man  who  is  trying, 
as  he  has  been  taught,  to  despise  and  pity  the  victims 
of  the  supernatural.  To  him  one  wants  to  say  :  "  Do 
not  dare  to  despise  what  is  the  noblest  act  that  man 
has  ever  tried  to  do.  You  degrade  yourself  when 
you  do  that.  It  is  only  by  a  divine.  Holy  Spirit  that 
any  man  can  have  faith." 

Begin  with  this,  then :  that  the  greatness  of  any 
act  is  to  be  estimated  by  the  faculties  of  man  which  it 


THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF  FAITH.       93 

employs.  It  is  a  greater  act  for  a  man  to  write  a  book 
than  for  him  to  build  a  fence,  because  the  writing 
of  the  book  demands  the  use  of  deeper  powers.  The 
man  must  think,  —  at  least  a  little,  —  and  arrange  his 
thought,  and  give  it  utterance  in  language.  To  govern 
a  State  requires  still  nobler  faculties,  faculties  rarer, 
finer,  more  profound,  faculties  that  must  be  summoned 
for  their  work  out  of  yet  deeper  chambers  of  our  hu- 
man nature.  When  I  know  what  faculties  any  man's 
work  requires,  at  once  I  know  where  that  work 
stands  in  comparative  dignity  among  the  works  of 
men.  When  a  new  act  of  man  is  offered  to  me  which 
I  have  not  been  called  upon  to  estimate  before,  I  ask 
myself  what  powers  the  man  will  have  to  use  who 
does  that  act,  and  when  I  know  that,  then  I  am  sure 
that  I  can  judge  it  rightly. 

This  is  the  test  that  we  must  apply  here :  What 
faculties  are  needed  in  an  act  of  faith  ?  What  powers 
must  a  man  use  who  says  with  all  his  heart  of  an 
unseen  Jesus,  "  He  is  my  Lord  and  Master  "  ?  Let  us 
see  —  and  first  of  all  there  is  the  power  of  dealing 
with  the  unseen  at  all.  Back  from  the  visible  to  the 
invisible  which  lies  behind  it,  the  mind  of  man  is  al- 
ways pressing ;  and  as  it  presses  back,  there  are  new 
powers  coming  out  into  consciousness  and  use.  The 
first  man  in  his  immaturity  deals  with  things.  Man 
as  he  grows  maturer  deals  also  with  ideas.  The 
things  are  visible  and  tangible.  The  ideas  no  eye  has 
seen,  no  hand  has  ever  touched.  Subtle,  elusive,  and 
yet  growing  to  be  more  real  to  the  mind  of  the  man 
who  truly  deals  with  them  than  are  the  bricks 
of   which  his  house  is  built,  or   the  iron  tool  with 


94        THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF  FAITH. 

which  he  does  his  work,  the  great  ideas  of  justice,  of 
beauty,  of  sublimity,  become  at  once  the  witnesses 
and  the  educators  of  man's  deeper  powers  which 
must  come  out  to  do  their  work.  The  birth  of 
the  power  of  recognizing  and  dealing  with  ideas,  the 
birth  of  ideality,  is  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
world  or  of  a  man.  Or,  again,  you  know  your  friend 
by  the  seeing  of  the  eye  ;  all  the  distinct  intercourses 
of  the  senses  introduce  your  life  to  his;  and  then 
your  friend  goes  away  from  you,  out  of  your  sight, 
to  China  or  Peru ;  and  as  your  power  of  friendship 
reaches  out  to  follow  him,  as  the  thought  of  him 
takes  the  place  of  the  sight  of  him,  as  association, 
and  memory,  and  hope,  and  imagination  come  out 
at  your  need  to  bind  your  life  with  his,  —  is  not  your 
friendsliip  growing  greater  with  the  new  faculties  it 
requires,  has  not  your  love  for  your  unseen  friend 
become  a  nobler  exercise  than  any  delight  in  his 
visible  presence  possibly  could  be?  These  are  in- 
stances and  illustrations  of  the  glories  of  the  faculty 
in  man  by  which  he  has  to  do  with  things  which  he 
cannot  see.  And  when  the  unseen  one  is  Christ,  a 
being  whom  the  man  never  has  seen,  whom  yet  he  is 
compelled  to  realize,  not  as  an  idea,  but  as  a  living 
person  capable  of  being  loved,  and  trusted,  and 
obeyed,  there  surely  is  a  noble  demand  there  for  one 
of  the  loftiest  of  human  faculties ;  and  the  loftiness 
of  the  faculty  which  must  be  used  in  doing  it  bears 
testimony  to  the  loftiness  of  the  act  which  the  man 
does  who  says  of  the  unseen  Jesus  Christ,  "  He  is 
my  Lord." 

Another  of  the  faculties  which  is  involved  in  faith. 


THE   DIGNITY  AND   GREATNESS   OP   FAITH.       95 

and  whose  necessity  is  a  sign  that  a  true  act  of  faith 
is  one  of  the  completest  acts  which  man  can  do,  is 
the  faculty  of  personal  admiration  and  trust.  In 
its  fullest  exercise  faith  is  personal.  We  speak  in- 
deed of  faith  in  principles,  and  that  is  a  noble  and 
ennobling  thing ;  but  the  fullest  trust  comes  with  the 
perception  of  trustworthy  character,  and  the  entire 
reliance  of  one  nature  on  another.  Is  it  a  great 
power  or  a  great  weakness  in  a  man's  life  that  makes 
him  capable  of  doing  that  ?  I  am  tempted,  in  answer 
to  that  question,  to  point  you  simply  to  that  which  I 
am  sure  that  you  have  all  seen  and  felt,  the  strange 
and  sometimes  terrible  deterioration  which  so  often 
comes  in  men's  characters  as  they  grow  up  from 
boyhood  into  manhood,  leaving  the  years  of  docility 
behind  them,  pass  into  the  years  of  self-reliance  and 
independence.  The  poetry  and  beauty  and  richness 
of  a  boy's  life  lie  in  his  power  of  admiration  for, 
and  trust  in,  something  greater  than  himself.  If  you 
fathers  make  your  homes  what  they  ought  to  be,  the 
boys  will  find  the  object  of  that  admiration  and  trust 
in  you.  If  you  will  not  let  them  find  it  there,  they  will 
find  it  somewhere  else.  Somewhere  they  will  surely 
find  it.  And  in  their  admiration  and  their  trust,  the 
outreaching  and  uplifting  of  their  life  will  come. 
What  does  it  mean  when  men  as  they  grow  older 
become  narrow,  sordid,  and  machine-like,  when  a 
vulgar  self-content  comes  over  them,  and  all  the 
limitations  of  a  finished  life  that  hopes  for  and 
expects  no  more  than  what  it  is  makes  the  sad 
picture  which  we  see  in  hosts  of  men's  middle  life? 
Is  it  not  certainly  that  those  men   have  ceased  to 


90       THK  DIGNITY   AND  GREATNESS  OF   FAITH. 

admire  and  ceased  to  trust?  The  objects  of  their 
childhood's  trust  and  admiration  they  have  out- 
grown, and  like  young  scholars  who  imagine  that 
the  story-books  of  infancy  are  the  only  books  in  the 
world,  and  so,  when  those  books  cease  to  interest  the 
maturing  mind,  lay  by  their  power  of  reading  as  if 
there  were  no  further  use  for  it,  so  these  men,  when 
they  can  no  longer  admire  and  trust  their  fellow-men 
completely,  as  they  used  to  do  when  they  were  boys, 
think  that  the  faculty  of  perfect  trust  and  admiration 
has  no  further  use.  The  blight  that  falls  upon  their 
admiring  and  trusting  natures  is  the  token  of  what 
a  lofty  and  life-giving  faculty  it  is  which  they  have 
put  out  of  use.  It  was  this  faculty  which  made 
them  at  every  moment  greater  than  themselves, 
which  kept  them  in  communion  with  the  riches  of  a 
higher  life,  which  preserved  all  the  enthusiasm  of 
active  energy,  and  yet  preserved  humility  which  held 
all  the  other  faculties  to  their  best  work.  This  is  the 
faculty  whose  disuse  makes  the  mature  life  of  so 
many  men  barren  and  dreary,  and  whose  regenera- 
tion, when  the  man  is  lifted  up  into  the  new  admira- 
tion and  the  new  trust,  the  admiration  for  and  trust 
in  God,  makes  a  large  part  of  the  glory  of  the  full- 
grown  life  of  faith. 

One  other  quality  I  mention  which  must  be  in  the 
man  who  sends  his  faith  out  into  the  unseen  and 
fastens  it  in  trust  and  admiration  on  a  divine  person. 
'5i  I  know  not  what  to  call  it  except  a  hopeful  sense  of 
need,  —  not  only  a  sense  of  need,  for  that,  if  it  be 
not  hopeful,  may  merely  grovel  and  despair,  —  but  a 
sense  of  personal  deficiency,  filled  and  lighted  up  all 


THE   DIGNITY  AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.       97 

through  and  through  with  the  conviction  that  some- 
where in  the  world,  in  some  place  not  desperately 
beyond  its  reach,  there  lies,  waiting  for  its  finding, 
the  strength  and  the  supply  that  it  requires.  This  is 
the  faculty  in  which  has  lain  the  coiled  mainspring 
of  all  human  progress.  Barbarism,  filled  with  the 
hopeful  sense  of  need,  has  pressed  onward  and  on- 
ward into  civilization.  Ignorance,  hopefully  know- 
ing its  need,  has  scaled  the  heavens  and  fathomed 
the  seas  and  cleft  the  rocks  for  knowledge.  Man,  in 
all  ages,  has  struggled  and  achieved,  has  wrestled 
with  his  present  condition  and  laid  his  daring  hand 
on  higher  things,  under  the  power  of  this  faculty  in 
which  were  met  the  power  of  his  clear  perception  of 
his  deficiencies  and  his  deep  conviction  that  his  defi- 
ciencies might  be  supplied.  Is  this  a  noble  faculty 
or  not?  I  would  be  willing  to  appeal  again  to  your 
own  consciousness.  There  are  times  when  this  fac- 
ulty is  very  sluggish  and  dull  within  you,  and  there 
are  other  times  when  it  seems  full  of  life.  Some 
days  there  are  when  the  story  of  your  need  falls  on 
your  ears  like  an  unmeaning  tale ;  when  either  you 
are  self-contented  and  feel  no  lack  in  heart  or  brain 
or  character,  or,  feeling  it,  have  no  hope  but  that  you 
must  go  on  forever  the  poor,  half-developed,  crippled 
thing  you  are.  Then  there  are  other  days  when  you 
look  through  and  through  yourself,  and  any  thought 
of  keeping  on  constantly  just  as  you  see  yourself 
now  is  terrible.  You  know  your  sin  and  sordidness. 
But  at  the  same  time  voices  are  calling  you  to  come 
and  get  the  things  that  you  require.  The  whole 
great  voice  of  all  the  world  seems  to  be  promising 


98       THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH. 

you  escape  and  supply.  As  deep  and  strong  as  the 
sense  of  need  is  the  hope.  Of  those  two  days,  which 
is  the  greater?  On  which  of  them  are  you  the 
stronger  man  ?  Is  this  faculty,  which  on  the  second 
of  these  days  is  awake  in  you,  a  degradation  or  an 
exaltation  of  your  life?  There  can  be  but  one 
answer,  only  one.  You  know  you  never  are  so 
great,  never  so  thoroughly  a  man,  as  when  with 
manly  honesty  you  see  yourself  through  and  through, 
and,  filled  with  shame,  are  yet  inspired  and  held  up 
by  hope.  But  all  that  must  come  to  pass,  this  fac- 
ulty of  hopeful  neediness  must  wake  and  live,  before 
a  man  can  with  true  faith  call  Jesus  Chi-ist,  the 
Saviour  of  the  world,  his  Lord. 

And  now  once  more  I  say,  it  is  the  faculties 
which  any  act  demands  which  indicate  the  degree 
of  dignity  and  greatness  in  that  act.  Behold,  then, 
what  we  have  reached.  In  the  act  of  faith,  by 
which  you  or  I  trust  ourselves  to  the  keeping  and 
make  ourselves  the  servants  of  Christ,  there  must 
meet  these  faculties,  or  else  the  act  cannot  be  done : 
the  power  of  dealing  with  the  unseen,  the  power  of 
personal  loyalty  and  trust,  the  power  of  a  hopeful 
sense  of  need.  Those  three  great  powers  in  their 
aggregate  meet  in  the  man  who  is  Christ's  servant. 
Now  what  I  claim  is  this,  that  the  belief  and  per- 
sonal devotion  for  whose  attainment  that  aggregate 
of  qualities  must  meet  is  a  most  great  and  glorious 
action.  I  do  not  say  now  that  it  is  an  action  possi- 
ble or  impossible,  or  whether  the  man  who  thinks 
with  all  his  soul  that  he  is  doing  it  is  congratulating 
himself  upon  the  great  fact  of  his  life,  or  hugging  to 


THE  DIGNITY  AND  GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.       99 

his  heart  the  most  shadowy  of  all  delusions.  I  only- 
say  that  the  description  of  the  act  involves  a  picture 
of  the  most  complete  and  lofty  and  thoroughly 
human  action  which  a  man  can  be  conceived  of  as 
doing ;  and  that  if  man,  having  thought  himself 
capable  of  such  an  action,  should  be  completely 
proved  to  be  incapable  of  it,  his  whole  life  would 
have  suffered  an  incalculable  loss.  The  world  of 
human  existence  would  have  been  robbed  of  its  sun- 
light and  its  sky.  On  this  I  am  sure  that  we  ought 
to  insist.  There  are  bold,  trenchant  writers  and 
talkers  to-day  who  are  congratulating  the  world  that 
the  days  of  faith  are  over,  that  the  glorious  liberty 
of  unbelief  has  come.  That  certainly  will  never 
do.  You  must  not  pluck  the  jewel  off  of  the  fore- 
head of  the  man  who  has  counted  himself  a  king  and 
then  ask  him  to  thank  you  as  if  you  had  broken  fet- 
ters from  his  wrists.  You  must  not  pull  down  the 
sun  out  of  the  sky  and  then  bid  men  rejoice  that  they 
have  escaped  from  the  slavery  of  sunlight.  If  there 
is  no  God  whom  I  can  come  to  and  obey  and  trust, 
I  want  to  know  the  dreadful  fact,  and  not  to  go  on 
thinking  that  there  is  ;  for  it  is  better  for  every  man  to 
know  the  fact,  however  dreary  and  dreadful  it  may 
be,  than  to  believe  a  lie,  however  sweet  and  gracious. 
But  that  is  something  utterly  different  from  saying 
that  it  would  not  be  better  for  us  all  if  faith  were 
possible,  and  that  to  be  robbed  of  the  possibility  of 
faith  is  the  desolation  and  ruin  of  human  life. 

One  wants  to  say  the  same  thing  to  men  who  do 
believe  with  all  their  hearts,  men  who  believe  with 
all  the  strength  of  an  experience  which  no  man  can 


100     THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS    OF   FAITH. 

disturb,  in  the  possibility  and  the  reality  of  faith. 
I  seem  to  hear  a  certain  sort  of  apologetic  tone 
among  men  of  faith,  which  is  not  good.  They  some- 
times seem  to  plead  that  their  faith  may  be  left  to 
them,  much  as  a  baby  pleads  that  he  may  keep  his 
toys,  or  a  lame  man  that  he  may  keep  his  crutches. 
It  is  the  appeal  of  weakness.  The  man  who  trusts 
God  sometimes  seems  almost  to  say  to  his  unbelieving 
brother,  "  Forgive  me.  I  am  not  as  strong  as  you  are. 
I  cannot  do  without  this  help.  You  are  more  strong 
and  do  not  need  it.  But  let  me  keep  it  still."  No 
open  foe  of  faith  can  do  faith  so  much  harm  as  that 
kind  of  believer.  Shall  the  disciple  be  ashamed  of 
that  which  is  the  glory  of  his  manhood,  its  highest 
reach,  requiring  the  combination  of  its  noblest  powers  ? 
The  only  thing  to  be  said  about  such  feeble-hearted 
faith  as  that  is  that  it  is  not  faithful  enough  to  know 
the  essential  dignity  of  faith.  It  is  a  sick  man  apolo- 
gizing to  death  because  he  is  not  quite  ready  yet  to 
die.  It  is  the  meagreness  of  health  in  him  that  prompts 
his  poor  apology.  Let  him  grow  healthier  and  he  be- 
gins to  look  not  down  to  death  with  apologies,  but  up 
to  life  with  hopes  and  aspirations.  So  let  the  weak 
disciple  grow  more  strong  in  faith,  and  he  will  have 
no  longer  feeble  words  of  shame  and  self-excuse  to 
say  about  his  trust  in  Christ ;  only  his  whole  life  will 
grow  one  earnest  prayer  for  an  increase  of  faith,  as 
the  child's  life  is  one  continued  hope  and  prayer  for 
manhood. 

O  young  disciples,  whatever  other  kind  of  false- 
ness to  your  faith  you  may  fall  into,  may  you  be 
saved  at  least  from  ever  being  ashamed  of  it.     It  is 


THE  DIGNITY  AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.     101 

the  noblest,  the  divinest,  thing  on  earth.  You  may 
have  only  got  hold  of  the  very  borders  of  it,  but  if 
in  any  true  sense  you  can  say,  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord," 
you  have  set  foot  into  the  region  wherein  man  lives 
his  completest  life.  Go  on,  without  one  thought  or 
dream  of  turning  back,  and  with  no  shamefaced  hid- 
ing of  the  new  mastery  under  which  you  are  trying 
to  live.  If  your  Christian  service  is  too  small  in  its 
degree  for  you  to  boast  of,  it  is  too  precious  in  its 
kind  for  you  to  be  ashamed  of.  Go  on  forever  crav- 
ing and  forever  winning  more  faith  and  obedience, 
and  so  learning  more  and  more  forever  that  faith 
and  obedience  are  the  glory  and  crown  of  human 
life. 

But  now  let  us  return  to  our  text.  We  have  been 
talking  about  the  dignity  and  greatness  of  faith. 
But  St.  Paul  says  something  else  about  it.  It  is  the 
gift  and  inspiration  of  God.  "  No  man  can  say  that 
Jesus  is  the  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  ^Itost."  Not 
merely,  it  is  a  great  and  noble  thing  to  feel  through 
all  life  the  grasp  and  influence  of  Jesus,  but  tliis 
\  great  and  noble  thing  no  man  can  do  unless  God 
/  the  Holy  Ghost  inspires  and  helps  him  to  do  it.  This 
statement  of  St.  Paul  seems  to  me  to  have  at  its 
heart  the  profoundest  and  most  beautiful  conception 
of  the  relation  between  God  and  man.  Suppose  that 
it  were  not  true.  Suppose  that  faith  in  Christ 
being,  as  I  have  tried  to  show  it,  the  crowning  act 
of  man,  it  were  yet  an  act  which  man  could  do  with- 
out any  inspiration  or  help  of  God;  suppose  that 
in  this,  or  any  other  of  the  greatest  actions  of  his 
life,  man  could  first  conceive  the  wish  to  do  it  all 


102     THE  DIGNITY   AND  GEEATNESS   OF  FAITH. 

by  and  of  himself,  and  then  could  quietly  gather  up 
his  powers  and  go  and  do  it  all  by  and  of  himself,  — 
have  you  not  in  such  a  supposition  broken  the  abso- 
luteness, the  essentialness,  the  permanency,  of  the 
whole  relation  between  our  life  and  God's  ?  The  true 
idea  of  that  relationship  involves  the  presence  of 
God  in  every  highest  activity  of  man.  It  often 
seems  to  me  as  if  men  had  got  such  a  low  and  in- 
adequate conception  of  all  this !  Men  talk,  very 
religious  men,  as  if  God  were  a  sort  of  reserve  force 
to  be  called  in  when  He  was  needed  —  a  sort  of  last 
resort  when  man's  strength  failed.  And  so  I  some- 
times think  that  the  whole  Christian  thought  of 
man's  being  dependent  upon  God  continually  seems 
to  a  good  many  people  like  something  cowardly,  un- 
manly, a  miserable  calling  up  of  the  reserve  when  we 
ought  to  be  fighting  out  the  battle  for  ourselves. 
The  thought  of  God  which  Christ  came  to  reveal,  the 
thouQfht  of  God  of  which  all  Christ's  own  life  was 
full,  is  something  totally  different  from  that.  To 
Christ's  thought  God  and  man  are  part  of  one  sys- 
tem —  one  structure,  one  working-force.  To  separate 
them  is  not  simply  to  deny  man  a  power  that  he 
needs  :  it  is  to  break  a  unity,  and  to  set  a  part  of 
the  power  to  the  attempt  to  do  what  the  whole 
power  ought  to  do  as  one.  The  strength,  the  force, 
which  is  appointed  to  lift  your  burden,  to  run  your 
race,  to  find  your  truth,  to  hold  the  canopy  of  faith- 
fulness over  your  life,  is  not  you.  It  is  you  and 
God.  For  you  to  try  to  do  it  alone  is  unnatural.  It 
is  almost  as  if  the  engine  tried  to  run  without  its 
steam,  or  as  if  the  chisel  tried  to  carve  without  the 


THE  DIGNITY  AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.     103 

artist.  It  is  engine  and  steam  that  are  to  make  the 
running-power.  It  is  artist  and  chisel  that  are  to 
carve  the  statue.  It  is  God  and  you  that  live  your 
life.  For  you  to  try  to  live  it  alone  is  to  try  to 
do  all  the  work  with  one  part  of  the  power.  God 
is  not  a  crutch  coming  in  to  help  your  lameness,  un- 
necessary to  you  if  you  had  all  your  strength.  He 
is  the  breath  in  your  lungs.  The  stronger  you  are, 
the  more  thoroughly  you  are  yourself,  the  more  you 
need  of  it,  the  more  you  need  of  Him. 
.  How  clear  this  became  in  the  life  of  Jesus  Him- 
self !  There  was  humanity  at  its  best.  Could  it  do 
without  those  supplies  of  God  which  the  lower  hu- 
manity required  ?  Did  it  throw  away  its  crutch  and 
walk  in  its  own  self-sufficient  strength  ?  Oh,  no !  It 
breathed  deeper  than  any  other  human  life  has  ever 
breathed  of  the  breath  of  God.  It  filled  itself  with 
His  Spirit.  It  did  nothing  by  itself,  but  everything 
with,  in,  by  Him.  Oh,  my  dear  friends,  there  is  the 
everlasting  testimony  that  utter  dependence  on  God 
is  no  accident  of  man's  sin  or  misfortune,  but  is  the 
intrinsic  and  eternal  necessity  and  glory  of  man's 
nature. 

And  so  when  man  comes  to  that  which  I  have 
claimed  to  be  his  completing  act,  when  he  says  that 
Jesus  is  the  Lord,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  cannot  do 
that  alone,  not  by  himself,  a  poor  half-life,  crippled 
and  broken.  It  needs  the  whole  of  him  —  and  he  is 
not  the  whole  of  himself  unless  God  is  in  him.  He 
cannot  do  it  "but  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  The  man 
with  a  duty  says,  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord,"  and  he  is 
brave.     The  man  with  a  temptation  says,  "  Jesus  is 


/ 


104     THE    DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH. 

the  Lord,"  and  he  is  firm.  The  man  with  a  suffering 
says,  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord,"  and  he  is  patient.  The 
man  with  a  bewilderment  says,  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord," 
and  he  sees  light.  Is  it  not  a  true  and  precious  part 
of  the  value  of  those  great  experiences,  that  in  each 
of  them  there  is  both  the  struggle  of  the  human  soul 
up  to  God,  and  also  the  uprising  of  the  divine  soul 
carrying  the  man  deeper  into  itself  —  that  neither  of 
those  men  says  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord  "  but  by  the  Holy 
Ghost? 

There  is  one  other  point  of  which  I  wish  to  speak 
before  I  close.  I  have  been  magnifying  faith.  I  have 
been  painting  it  as  what  I  know  it  is,  the  consummate 
action  of  the  human  soul,  requiring  the  soul's  best 
faculties  working  at  their  best.  I  can  imagine  while  I 
speak  thus  that  some  hearts  here  may  be  asking  them- 
selves, "  What  then  ?  If  faith  be  such  a  supreme  act, 
must  it  not  be  the  privilege  of  a  few,  must  it  not  be 
within  the  power  only  of  the  supreme  souls?  Can  I, 
one  of  the  weakest  and  worldliest  of  men,  can  I  do 
such  an  act,  an  act  that  needs  such  powers  ?  "  And 
so  perhaps  I  may  seem  to  have  lifted  the  very  thing 
which  all  men  ought  to  do  out  of  the  possibility  of 
many  men.  I  would  not  leave  any  such  doubt  in  any 
soul.  God  forbid  that  in  trying  to  make  faith  seem 
glorious  I  should  make  it  seem  impossible  !  But  it  is 
true  of  God's  gifts  always  that  the  most  complete  of 
them  are  also  the  most  possibly  universal.  Is  it  not 
so?  Think  of  this  illustration :  wealth  is  a  lower  gift 
than  health,  and  wealth  is  evidently  limited  in  its 
possibility ;  all  men  are  not  intended  to  be  rich  —  but 
health  is  for  all  men.     It  is  unnatural  for  any  man  to 


THE  DIGNITY   AND  GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.     105 

be  sick.  And  so  of  admiration  and  of  love.  To  be 
loved  is  better  than  to  be  admired  —  and  admiration 
is  the  privilege  of  a  few  brilliant  natures,  while  love 
is  within  the  reach  of  any  pure  and  loving  heart.  And 
so  of  the  subtler  beauties  of  art  and  the  simpler  beau- 
ties of  nature.  Art  is  the  privilege  of  the  few,  but 
nature  opens  her  treasures  wide.  "  There  is  no  price 
set  on  the  lavish  summer,  and  June  may  be  had  by 
the  poorest  comer."  But  nature  is  as  much  more  beau- 
tiful as  she  is  more  free  than  art.  It  is  a  splendid  law 
of  all  God's  world,  a  law  that  makes  the  whole  world 
shine  with  the  splendor  of  His  love,  that  everywhere 
the  finest  is  the  freest.  The  lower  blessings  are  often 
the  exceptions,  but  the  higher  blessings  are  meant  to 
be  not  the  exception,  but  the  rule.  If  tliis  be  so,  then 
how  must  it  be  with  that  blessing  which  outgoes  all 
others,  the  blessing  of  faith,  the  blessing  of  living 
under  the  perpetually  recognized  lordship  of  Christ? 
The  finest  of  all  gifts  of  God  —  may  we  not  look  for 
it  to  be  the  freest  too  ?  Free  as  the  air,  which  is  the 
most  precious  thing  the  world  contains,  and  yet 
struggles  as  nothing  else  in  all  the  world  struggles 
to  give  itself  away  —  crowds  itself  in  wherever  it 
can  go,  and  moves  whatever  will  let  itself  be  moved 
by  its  elastic  pressure. 

And  this  grows  clearer  and  surer  still  when  we  re- 
member that  the  part  of  us  to  which  the  pressure  of 
God,  the  power  of  his  Holy  Ghost  asking  to  be  ad- 
mitted to  govern  our  lives,  applies  for  its  admission 
is  the  part  which  is  most  universally  open  and  active 
^*  in  all  the  degrees  of  mankind ;  namely,  the  moral  part. 
Think  how  often  you  are  ready  to  listen  to  a  poor  ig- 


106     THE  DIGNITY  AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH. 

norant  creature's  judgment  of  right  and  wrong,  and 
pay  the  deepest  reverence  to  it,  when  you  would  not 
care  in  the  least  for  that  same  creature's  judgment  of 
any  question  of  the  intellect.  Think  how  a  little 
child  can  look  you  in  the  eye  with  his  pure,  clear 
glance,  as  you  are  telling  your  well-disguisod  false- 
hood, and  say,  "  That  is  not  true,"  and  make  you 
quail.  Think  how  you  can  touch  a  child's  conscience 
long  before  you  can  waken  his  brain.  All  these  are 
illustrations  and  signs  of  the  universalness  of  moral 
life.  It  is  in  all  men  and  in  all  times  of  each  man's 
life.  And  so  a  blessing  which  must  enter  by  that 
door  can  find  in  every  nature  a  door  to  enter  by.  A 
Holy  Spirit,  having  its  power  in  its  holiness,  need  not 
be  shut  out  of  any  heart  that  is  capable  of  knowing 
holiness  and  being  holy.  Therefore  no  soul  of  dunce 
or  boor  or  little  child  is  too  low  to  be  brought  by  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  the  place  where,  answering  back  by 
the  divine  within  it  to  the  divine  above  it,  it  may  say 
that  "  Jesus  is  the  Lord."  I  have  claimed  already 
that  no  soul  is  too  high  to  find  in  that  announcement 
of  its  faith  the  consummation  of  its  life.  Here,  then, 
is  where  the  highest  and  the  lowest  meet.  Here 
is  where  they  have  met  through  all  the  ages.  Glori- 
ous thinkers,  great  strong  workers,  sufferers  whose 
lives  were  miracles  of  patience,  all  of  these  singing 
as  they  went  their  ways,  "Jesus  is  Lord,  Jesus  is 
Lord."  And  all  around  them,  and  in  among  them, 
dull,  plodding  souls,  and  minds  whose  thought  was 
all  confused  and  bewildered  with  emotion,  and  little 
children,  with  their  crude  clear  pictures  in  tlieir 
simple  brains,  all  these  too  singing,  in  their  several 


THE  DIGNITY   AND   GREATNESS   OF   FAITH.     107 

tones  and  with  their  several  clearness,  "  Jesus  is  Lord, 
Jesus  is  Lord." 
yy  Would  you  be  able  to  say  that,  to  join  that  great 
human  chorus,  to  claim  Christ  for  your  Lord  with 
some  especial  claim  of  your  own  which  shall  make 
the  great  human  chorus  which  claims  Him  for  the 
world  a  little  more  complete  ?  You  can  do  it.  But 
you  can  do  it  only  "  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  Only  by 
letting  God  enter  into  you  can  you  go  up  to  God, 
and  own  with  joy  and  thankfulness  the  mastery  of 
his  Son.  And  oh,  my  friends,  remember  that  the 
owning  of  Christ's  mastery  here  is  but  the  beginning 
of  the  participation  in  Christ's  glory  in  heaven. 

Into  that  may  we  all  come  at  last  by  His  great 
level 


vn. 

THE   SANCTUARY   OF  GOD. 

"  Then  thought  I  to  understand  this,  but  it  was  too  hard  for  me ; 
Until  I  went  into  the  Sanctuary  of  God ;  then  understood  I  the 
end  of  these  men."  —  Psalms  Ixxiii.  16,  17. 

This  is  called  one  of  the  psalms  of  Asaph.  About 
Asaph  nobody  knows  very  much :  only  that  he  was 
a  friend  of  David,  the  master  of  his  music,  and  evi- 
dently, from  his  writings,  a  man  of  very  beautiful 
religious  and  poetic  spirit.  If  we  can  distinguish 
between  his  psalms  and  those  of  his  mightier  friend, 
we  should  say  that  Asaph's  were  more  calm  and  even 
and  tranquil,  more  pensive  and  placid,  with  less  of 
triumphant  exultation  or  of  profound  depression  than 
David's. 

But  in  this  psalm  Asaph  is  sorely  perplexed  and 
troubled.  How  old  the  bewilderments  of  the  world 
are  !  I  think  it  makes  our  own  difficulties  harder  and 
easier  at  once  to  bear  when  we  think  how  many  long- 
forgotten  souls  have  struggled  in  them  too  in  the 
years  that  are  past.  Here  almost  three  thousand  years 
ago  is  a  poor  man  who  can  make  nothing  out  of  the 
same  fact,  precisely,  which  has  kept  thousands  of 
people  wondering  and  questioning  this  last  week. 
You  recognize  it  the  moment  that  you  open  the  psalm. 
"  I  was  envious  at  the  foolish,"  he  says,  "  when  I  saw 
the  prosperity  of  the  wicked."    The  prosperity  of  the 


THE   SANCTUARY  OF   GOD.  109 

wicked !  that  critical  puzzle  of  all  times,  the  apparent 
absence  of  justice  in  this  life  of  ours.  "  They  are 
not  in  trouble  like  other  folk,  neither  are  they  plagued 
like  other  men."  And  they  say,  "  How  doth  God 
know,  and  is  there  knowledge  in  the  Most  High? 
Behold,  these  are  the  ungodly  ;  these  prosper  in  the 
world;  they  increase  in  riches.  Verily,  I  have 
cleansed  my  heart  in  vain  and  washed  my  hands  in 
innocency."  That  is  the  puzzle ;  as  old  as  Asaph, 
as  young  as  some  struggling  child  of  God  who  knows 
that  his  uprightness  is  keeping  him  poor  and  that  his 
unscrupulous  neighbor  is  growing  rich  by  his  side 
to-day. 

And  then  comes  Asaph's  escape  from  the  puzzle : 
"I  thought  to  understand  this,"  he  says,  "  but  it  was 
too  hard  for  me  ;  until  I  went  into  the  Sanctuary  of 
God ;  then  understood  I  the  end  of  these  men." 
The  escape  perhaps  is  not  so  familiar  as  the  puzzle. 
He  goes  into  the  sanctuary  of  God,  he  goes  to 
church,  and  there  he  finds  a  light  that  makes  the 
dark  things  clear,  and  the  cloud  scatters,  and  he  un- 
derstands it  all.  At  once  we  feel  that  we  are  talking 
with  the  Hebrew.  Here  is  the  man  to  whom  the 
temple  was  the  centre  of  everything.  There,  not 
merely  in  burning  shekinah,  but  in  the  deep-felt  spir- 
itual sympathy,  his  God  abode,  and  there  with  his 
deep,  strong,  trustful  love,  and  fear  for  his  God,  he 
was  used  to  go  to  find  Him.  It  was  different  from 
the  way  we  go  to  church.  There  was  nothing  hard, 
dull,  or  routinelike  in  it.  We  cannot  read  the  Psalms 
without  seeing  what  a  spring  and  life  and  freshness, 
what  a   holy  curiosity   and  eagerness  and  affection 


110  THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD. 

there  was  in  the  hearts  of  the  men  who  went  up  to 
the  temple.  "  I  was  ghid  wlien  they  said  unto  me, 
Let  us  go  up  to  the  house  of  the  Lord.  Our  feet  shall 
stand  in  thy  courts,  O  Jerusalem."  Nobody  can 
read  the  Old  Testament  without  seeing  something 
very  beautiful  and  grand,  almost  awful.  In  the 
midst  of  all  the  pettiness  and  wickedness,  the  small 
intrigues  and  quarrels  that  show  us  the  littleness  of 
that  wonderful  Hebrew  people,  one  sight  never  loses 
its  sublimity.  It  is  the  yearly  gathering  of  the  peo- 
ple from  every  corner  of  the  land  to  the  sacred  fes- 
tival meeting  at  Jerusalem.  The  land  swarms  and 
hums  with  movement.  The  men  of  the  seashore  and 
the  desert  and  the  hills  ;  they  are  all  stirring.  Judah 
among  his  peaceful  hills,  the  wild  Simeonites  from 
their  home  in  the  desert,  Zebulon  and  Issachar  from 
the  rich  plain-country,  Asher  from  his  abode  along 
the  bays  and  creeks,  the  Reubenites  and  Gadites 
from  beyond  the  Jordan,  and  the  sons  of  Naphtali 
from  the  far  north,  about  the  very  roots  of  Lebanon, 
—  they  are  all  coming  to  appear  before  God.  Every 
pass  is  full,  every  hill-side  is  alive.  I  think  we  can- 
not estimate  the  power  in  a  nation's  life  of  such 
a  great  annual  symbolic  pilgrimage.  Every  man 
brought  his  own  burden,  his  own  sorrow,  his  own 
sin.  The  problems  of  the  year,  the  things  that  had 
perplexed  them  as  they  worked  in  the  fields  alone,  or 
debated  with  their  brethren,  or  met  the  troubles  of 
the  household  —  all  these  they  brought  to  offer  to  the 
Lord,  to  seek  solution  for  them  in  the  higher,  calmer 
atmosphere   of    the   temple.     There  was  the    place 


THE   SANCTUARY  OF   GOD.  Ill 

where  their  darkened  and  frightened  understandings 
would  find  light  and  peace. 

It  is  an  old-time  picture.  We  do  not  go  to  church  so 
now.  Indeed  it  is  not  well  that  we  should,  altogether. 
There  is  a  certain  amount  of  localizing  and  narrowing 
of  the  idea  of  Deity  about  it  which  is  not  good.  But 
there  is  much  in  it  which  it  is  good  to  keep, — at 
any  rate  impossible  co  make  light  of  or  despise.  It 
is  the  longing  for  o'ome  sacred  and  secluded  place  in 
this  low  beset  world.  Luther  dreamed  of  it  when 
as  a  young  monk  he  went  up  to  Rome  as  if  he  were 
going  up  to  heaven.  As  you  go  through  the  old 
cities  of  Europe  or  the  East  to-day,  you  see  the  weary 
man  or  woman  turn  aside  into  the  cool,  deep  door  of 
the  great  cathedral  to  say  a  prayer,  or  the  more  ab- 
stracted Oriental  drop  his  shoes  from  his  feet  and  fall 
prostrate,  with  the  crowd  all  around  him,  before  the 
city  shrine  as  if  he  were  far  off  in  the  desert  or  on 
some  lonely  hill.  I  am  sure  we  cannot  help  being 
glad  for  all  the  good  it  surely  does  them,  for  all  the 
light  they  get,  however  dim,  upon  the  hard  questions 
of  their  lives.  Woe  to  us  if  our  more  rational  belief, 
instead  of  lifting  all  the  earth  up  to  heaven,  only 
crowds  down  the  hill-tops  and  leaves  no  heaven,  and 
makes  our  whole  earth  earthly.  It  is  sad  indeed  if 
our  churches  have  no  light  to  give  to  the  problems 
that  perplex  our  houses  and  our  stores. 

But  having  said  thus  much,  I  want  to  speak  of  the 
subject  that  these  verses  will  suggest  this  morning, 
not  in  the  anc  ient  Hebrew,  but  in  the  modern  Chris- 
tian way.  What  made  Asaph  see  clearer  in  the 
temple  was  that  he  met  God  there.     We  have  been 


112  THE    SANCTUARY   OF   GK)D. 

taught  that  uot  aloue  in  temples  made  with  hands, 
but  everywhere  in  this  great  world  of  God  the  de- 
vout and  loving  soul  may  meet  with  God.  We  have 
been  taught  to  see  already  in  the  distance  that  world 
where  there  shall  be  no  temple  except  the  present 
God.  "  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb  the  temple  of 
it."  Not  only  to  the  temple,  then,  but  to  the  present 
God,  everywhere  and  always  ;  not  only  to  the  church, 
but  to  the  divine  presence  by  our  side  the  problems 
of  life  may  be  carried.  I  want  to  speak  of  the  new 
clearness  that  comes  into  many  difficult  questions, 
and  especially  into  this  question  of  the  unequal  lots 
of  men  when  we  survey  them  in  connection  with  the 
thought  of  God.  How  does  the  bringing  of  life 
into  God's  presence  make  it  intelligible  ? 

There  are,  then,  two  persons  I  think  to  whom  life 
seems  pretty  clear :  the  man  who  does  not  think  or 
feel  at  all,  and  the  man  who  thinks  and  feels  very 
deeply.  It  is  just  like  any  complicated  piece  of 
machinery.  The  factory  girl  who  sits  at  her  loom 
and  feeds  it  day  by  day  learns  just  how  the  machine 
takes  up  the  thread  she  offers  it  and  seems  to  under- 
stand the  whole.  The  engineer  who  has  the  plans  of 
all  the  engineering,  from  the  boiler  out  to  the  thin- 
nest and  subtlest  steel  finger  that  it  moves ;  he,  too,  is 
troubled  by  no  problems,  but  has  grasped  the  working 
of  the  whole.  Between  the  two  come  all  the  differ- 
ent degrees  of  intelligence  and  knowledge  which  see 
the  mysteries  more  than  the  work-girl  so  as  to  be 
puzzled  by  them,  but  do  not  see  them  as  much  as 
the  engineer  so  as  to  understand  them.  Just  so  it  is 
with   this  world.     The  sluggish   creature  who   just 


THE   SANCTUAT^Y    OF   GOD.  113 

runs  his  little  fragment  of  the  universe  and  asks  no 
questions  further  is  troubled  by  no  doubts.  The 
finished  soul  who  sees  with  God's  eyes  the  great 
moral  laws  which  govern  all  God's  worlds,  he,  too, 
may  rest  in  peace.  Between  the  two  the  great  mass 
of  men,  seeing  the  difficulties,  but  not  seeing  their 
solutions,  live  in  disquietude  and  questionings.  And 
when  one  has  once  outgrown  the  first  repose  of 
ignorance  and  thoughtlessness,  he  never  can  go  back 
to  it  —  there  is  no  hope  for  him  except  to  go  on  to 
the  higher  repose  of  faith  and  knowledge  and  sym- 
pathy with  God. 

It  is  the  moral  difficulties  that  give  men  most  dis- 
quietude. It  is  not  the  riddles  that  try  the  intellect, 
but  those  that  perplex  the  conscience.  When  we 
know  that  a  certain  thing  is  right,  and  that  righteous- 
ness seems  to  be  ignored  in  the  working  of  the  world, 
that  is  the  sort  of  puzzle  that  haunts  men  and  makes 
them  really  miserable.  And  of  all  moral  riddles  none 
is  more  perfect  a  perplexity  than  this,  —  that  with  a 
righteous  God  the  Giver  of  every  good  gift,  those 
good  gifts  should  be  bestowed  upon  unrighteousness. 
Not  here  and  there  as  if  by  accident,  or  as  if  an 
occasional  exception  was  necessary  in  the  working  of 
a  general  law,  but  so  generally  as  to  seem  sometimes 
universal.  Unscrupulousness  grows  rich.  Selfish- 
ness lives  in  luxury.  We  cannot  open  our  eyes 
without  seeing  it.  It  requires  no  abstruse  proof.  The 
bewildering  fact  flashes  itself  into  the  poor  man's  eyes 
in  the  glitter  of  rich  men's  windows  and  flings  itself 
as  if  in  scorn  upon  him,  as  their  carriages  spatter  him 


114  THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD. 

with  mud  as  he  stands  waiting  and  chafing  on  the 
crossing  to  let  them  pass. 

And  first  of  all,  if  we  feel  the  puzzle,  we  are  sure 
that  it  is  not  one  that  comes  to  us  out  of  any  wanton- 
ness of  God.  It  is  one  that  we  could  not  be  spared. 
Let  us  always  be  much  afraid  of  making  our  Heavenly 
Father  a  cruel  monster  who  plays  with  the  joy  and 
misery  of  His  poor  children,  and  mocks  them  with 
questions  for  which  they  have  no  answers.  The 
ancients  in  their  fable  of  the  sphinx  who  asked  her 
riddles  and  destroyed  those  who  tried  but  could  not 
solve  them,  had  just  exactly  this  idea.  They  got  it 
from  the  same  experience  of  the  mystery  and  con- 
tradictoriness  of  life  of  which  our  later  days  are  full. 
Let  us  keep  clear  of  any  such  thought  of  God.  If 
there  are  riddles  in  life,  He  does  not  set  them 
wantonly.  He  is  always  leading  us  towards  their 
solution  as  fast  as  we  are  able  to  go.  We  are  cheated 
by  our  weakness  and  our  ignorance.  He  is  always 
trying  to  make  us  strong  and  wise,  and  so  to  save  us 
from  delusion.  "God  is  light,  and  in  Him  is  no 
darkness  at  all."  That  is  the  first  certainty  about 
Him,  which  we  must  never  lose;  for  when  that  is 
gone,  there  is  nothing  left. 

After  all,  for  every  trouble  and  doubt  of  this  life, 
except  those  which  come  directly  from  our  own 
sinfulness,  the  only  consolation  that  we  really  need 
is  explanation.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  know  that.  A 
really  manly  man  will  ask  no  other  consolation.  This 
world  is  not  full  of  blunders  of  government  that 
need  to  be  reformed ;  but  it  is  full  of  obscurities  that 
we  long  to  have  enlightened.     The  fire  comes,  and 


THE  SANCTUARY   OF   GOD.  115 

the  consolation  for  the  loss  of  your  burnt  store  that 
you  need  is  merely  to  see  something  of  the  purpose 
for  which  God  permitted  it  to  go,  something  of  the 
spiritual  blessing  that  may  come  to  you  out  of  its 
loss.  Your  child  dies,  and  you  do  not  ask  for  the 
child  to  come  back  again,  but  your  heart  does  ache 
to  know  what  it  all  means,  to  see  something  of  what 
it  is  to  die,  to  trace  the  dear  life  that  is  gone  into  the 
bosom  of  the  Eternal  Love  that  has  taken  it.  Every- 
where the  devout  and  manly  soul  asks  for  explana- 
tion, and  is  sure  that  if  it  could  reach  that  it  would 
find  all  the  consolation  that  it  needs.  Such  trust  it 
has  in  God. 

And  now  take  the  special  bewilderment  that  puz- 
zled Asaph.  Put  yourself  in  his  place.  It  ought  not 
to  be  hard  to  do  it,  for  unless  you  are  either  more  or 
less  than  man  you  have  been  in  his  place  many  a 
time.  You  see  a  man  whom  you  know  to  be  wicked 
prospering.  Everything  he  touches  turns  to  gold. 
When  the  city  is  on  fire,  his  house  does  not  burn. 
When  the  pestilence  goes  stalking  about,  his  house- 
hold is  unbroken.  A  brighter  life  than  any  other 
house  can  show  seems  to  flash  through  his  glowing 
windows,  in  mockery  of  the  starving  honesty  without. 
Health,  honor,  happiness,  everything  is  there.  That 
is  what  you  and  Asaph  see.  And  now  here,  too,  the 
consolation  that  your  heart  asks  for  is  explanation. 
You  believe  in  a  God  so  sincerely  that  you  do  not 
say  this  state  of  things  is  wrong,  but  you  do  crave 
to  see  some  glimpse  of  how  it  can  be  right.  Then 
you  go  into  the  sanctuary  of  God;  somehow  you 
come  into  the  presence  of  the  Everlasting  Father. 


116  THE   SANCTUARY   OF  GOD. 

You  fill  yourself  with  the  sense  of  His  immensity  and 
goodness.  You  see  perfect  happiness  and  perfect 
holiness  brought  to  their  absolute  consistency,  nay 
their  absolute  identity  in  Him.  Do  you  not  begin 
to  feel  it  already  ?  Is  there  not  coming  a  calm  over 
the  tumult,  a  light  into  the  darkness?  Is  not  the 
promise  being  fulfilled,  "  In  thy  light  shall  we  see 
light  ?  "  Already  you  are  beginning  with  Asaph,  in 
the  sanctuary,  to  understand  "  the  end  of  these  men." 
And  what  does  this  mean  ?  Is  it  a  mere  expression 
of  Asaph's  triumph  ?  Is  it  merely  that  he  sees  that 
by  and  by  these  prosperous  men  will  have  their 
troubles  too,  and  hugs  himself  in  the  comfortable  as- 
surance that  if  they  are  the  richest,  he  is  the  safest, 
that  he  has  made  the  best  investment?  Is  he  merely 
encouraged  to  live  out  liis  present  misery  in  the  an- 
ticipation of  the  certain  time  when  things  will  be  re- 
versed, when  they  will  be  down  and  he  will  be  up  ? 
By  and  by  their  stores  will  burn.  By  and  by  their 
children  will  be  taken  too.  That  were  a  poor  conso- 
lation to  gloat  over.  Some  vision  of  such  a  spirit 
does  sometimes  appear  in  some  of  those  impreca- 
tory psalms,  which  I  hope  that  we  all  understand, 
that  we  read  in  church  not  as  patterns  of  Christian 
temper,  but  as  parts  of  the  complete  spiritual  biog- 
raphy of  a  great  but  very  imperfect  man.  But  I  do 
not  think  that  the  half-savage  mood  of  some  of  those 
psalms  is  present  here.  When  Asaph  says  that  in 
the  sanctuary  of  God  he  "  understands  the  end  of 
these  men,"  he  means  that  there  became  apparent  to 
him  the  limits,  the  essential  limits,  of  the  life  that 
they  live.     He  has  fallen  into  a  low  way  of  envying 


THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD.  117 

them  their  wealth,  as  if  wealth  was  everything.  He 
has  been  puzzled,  because  not  being  good  they  were 
rich,  as  if  riches  were  the  appropriate  premium  of 
goodness;  but  when  he  comes  to  stand  with  God  all 
that  is  altered.  He  comes  in  sight  of  larger  circles 
of  bliss.  He  sees  that  God  has  other  rewards  to  give 
His  chosen  besides  these  little  trinkets.  Absorbed 
in  the  newly  realized  beauty  of  these  higher  things, 
he  sees  the  worthlessness  of  the  lower,  and  easily 
leaves  them  to  the  souls  they  satisfy.  "Verily  I  say 
unto  you  they  have  their  reward."  So  long  as  he 
knows  nohigh(fr  happiness  than  prosperity,  it  puzzles 
him  that  the  bad  should  have  it.  So  soon  as  he 
comes  to  know  the  infinitely  higher  joy  of  company 
with  God,  and  sees  that  that  can  be  given  only  to  the 
good,  — "  without  holiness  no  man  can  see  the 
Lord,"  —  it  no  more  troubles  him  that  bad  men 
should  have  the  poor  counterfeit  of  happiness,  than 
it  troubles  the  solid  merchant,  sitting  in  his  houseful 
of  plain  and  solid  comfort,  to  see  a  miserable  fop  strut 
by  in  cheap  and  gaudy  finery  making  believe  and 
perhaps  thinking  that  he  is  rich. 

I  think  we  can  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Two  young 
students  start  out  together.  One  is  conscientious 
and  thorough  ;  the  other  is  showy  and  superficial.  In 
a  little  while  the  patient,  thorough  worker  is  sur- 
prised to  find  all  the  world  staring  at  and  talking 
about  his  showy  friend.  He  himself  passes  un- 
noticed, but  wherever  the  flimsy  scholarship  of  his 
friend  goes  men  clap  their  hands  and  stare  with 
wonder.  It  puzzles  him.  It  seems  all  wrong.  Does 
flippant  show,  then,  win  the  prize  that  ought  to  fall 


118  THE   SANCTUARY  OF   GOD. 

to  tonest  knowledge  ?  But  as  he  goes  deeper,  as  he 
comes  nearer  to  the  court  where  the  personal  majesty 
of  Truth  herself  abides,  it  all  becomes  clear.  The 
joy  of  knowing  Truth  and  being  near  to  her  out- 
shines all  those  lower  glories.  He  sees  that  the 
popular  applause  and  admiration  is  just  the  appro- 
priate reward  of  those  lower  devotions  that  have  won 
them.  He  sees  the  end,  the  limit,  of  his  brother 
student's  life  and  gladly  leaves  him  the  honor  he  has 
won,  pressing  on  himself  into  the  sanctuary  of  the 
Truth,  which  is  his  own  great  reward,  far  above  all 
honor  and  praise  of  men. 

Is  not  this,  then,  the  explanation  which  is  consola- 
tion? As  we  rise  higher  the  larger  circles  of  life 
open  to  us  their  value,  and  the  smaller  circles  show 
their  limits.  Abraham  is  summoned  out  of  his  father- 
land, Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  and  to  every  man  of  Ur  who 
stays  at  home  it  seems  doubtless  very  hard.  They 
settle  down  on  their  snug  farms,  and  are  glad  they 
have  not  to  go.  Perhaps  to  Abraham  himself,  al- 
though he  goes,  it  seems  hard  too  and  very  strange. 
But,  then,  the  wider  circles  open.  The  Canaanite  life 
appears.  The  Jewish  life  is  born.  Out  of  Jewry 
comes  Christ.  From  Christ  goes  forth  the  Gospel; 
Christendom  is  born.  All  modern  life,  all  promise 
of  the  millennial  earth  appears.  How  small  beside 
this  widening  life  of  Abraham  looks  the  limited  life 
of  Terah  and  Nahor  and  Haran,  who  were  left  be- 
hind at  Ur !  Who  that  stands  high  enough  to  see  it 
all,  who  that  has  entered  into  the  sanctuary  of  God, 
does  not  see  the  limit,  the  end  of  those  men  ? 

This  puts  in  their  true  place,  I  think,  all  the  lower 


THE   SANCTUARY  OF   GOD.  119 

aims  and  purposes  of  life.  Because  the  heart's  beat- 
ing is  not  the  whole  of  life,  it  does  not  make  the 
heart's  beating  unimportant.  Because  the  outer  life, 
the  life  of  business  and  society,  is  but  the  smallest 
circle  of  existence,  it  is  not  therefore  to  be  disre- 
garded. To  use  it,  yet  always  to  use  it  with  refer- 
ence to  its  limits,  always  to  understand  its  end,  not 
to  try  to  make  it  satisfy  needs  for  which  it  has  no 
satisfaction,  this  is  the  true  life.  The  difference  be- 
tween living  in  order  to  make  money,  and  making 
money  in  order  to  live,  to  live  the  fullest,  most  cul- 
tured, most  religious  life,  this  is  the  difference  that 
the  dullest  perception  can  feel  at  once  between  two 
business  men.  We  outgrow  our  lower  occupations 
not  as  we  outgrow  playthings  which  we  come  to  cast 
aside  altogether,  but  only  as  we  outgrow  our  first 
childish  slavery  to  food  and  come  to  count  it  not  an 
end  in  itself,  magnifying  our  appetites,  but  the  mere 
minister  and  material  of  thought  and  action  and 
emotion.  Thus  things  fall  into  their  natural  orders 
and  get  their  true  values  for  us ;  we  see  their  limits, 
we  understand  their  ends,  as  soon  as  we  look  at 
them  from  a  high  enough  standpoint,  as  soon  as  we 
go  into  the  sanctuary  of  God. 

I  seem  to  see  illustrations  of  this  truth  everywhere. 
Look  at  the  nations,  or  at  the  periods  of  history, 
which  may  be  said  to  have  been  fullest  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  divine  rulership.  Some  ages  seem  to 
be  so  worldly,  so  down  to  the  human  level  as  we  look 
back  upon  them ;  others  seem  to  be  trembling  and 
heaving  and  rising  with  the  very  presence  of  God. 
In  some,  men  have  seemed  to  feel  as  if  God  was  very 


120  THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD. 

far  off  from  them.  In  others,  all  kinds  of  men,  high 
or  low,  have  been  haunted  in  their  several  ways  with 
the  certainty  that  God  was  very  near.  Some  nations 
and  times  seem  to  be  wholly  of  the  earth,  earth3\ 
Others  truly  have  entered  into  and  live  in  the  very 
sanctuary  of  God,  a  solemn  knowledge  of  His  mercy, 
a  solemn  fear  of  His  law.  Of  nations  that  seem  thus 
full  of  a  special  sense  of  God  the  Jews  stand  out  in 
old  times ;  and  of  ages  that  have  been  most  aware  of 
Him  the  Puritan  times  in  the  history  of  our  own 
English  race  are  the  most  prominent.  And  no  one,  I 
think,  studies  the  history  of  either  without  feeling 
that  there  was  in  them,  roughly  marked,  because 
their  character  was  very  imperfect,  but  yet  very  real, 
a  clearer  insight  into  the  relative  values  of  things, 
a  juster  estimate  of  what  was  little  and  what  was 
great,  a  truer  judgment  of  the  necessary  limitations 
of  wealth,  honors,  fame,  success,  than  the  nations 
and  the  times  around  them  could  claim.  This  is 
what  made  the  one  the  most  heroic  and  truthful 
nation  of  its  time,  and  the  other  the  most  heroic  and 
truthful  period  of  our  English  history. 

But  men  are  better  illustrations  than  nations  or 
ages,  and  when  we  think  of  men  we  turn  at  once  to 
the  perfect  man,  and  think  of  Jesus  Christ.  He 
dwelt  with,  dwelt  in,  God  continually.  He  was  all 
ways  in  the  sanctuary  of  His  Father,  and  as  we  turn 
the  pages  of  His  story  what  a  clear  sense  we  have 
that  He  was  always  "  seeing  the  end  of  these  men." 
Can  you  picture  to  yourself  that  Jesus  could  possibly 
have  walked  through  the  richest  streets  of  Caper- 
naum or  Jerusalem,  and  had  it  for  an  instant  sug- 


THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD.  121 

gested  to  His  mind  that  it  was  a  hardship  to  Him 
that  all  those  low-minded  traders  should  have  been 
so  rich  and  He  so  poor  ?  Can  you  fancy  Him  look- 
ing into  pleasant  home-windows  as  He  passed,  and 
thinking  that  His  Father  had  wronged  Him  because 
He  had  no  home  ?  Oh  what  a  shielded  and  protected 
life  He  always  carried  !  What  false  judgment  or  re- 
pining bitterness  could  find  a  weak  spot  to  break  in  ? 
He  saw  the  end  of  Chorazin  and  Bethsaida,  and  it 
was  as  impossible  for  Him  to  envy  those  foolish  cities 
their  weak  folly  as  it  would  be  for  you,  familiar  with 
gold  and  silver,  to  begrudge  your  child  the  chips  and 
stones  with  which  he  plays  at  keeping  shop ;  nay, 
as  impossible  as  it  would  be  for  God,  with  the  reali- 
ties of  eternity  about  Him,  to  want  these  toys  and 
trifles  with  which  we  amuse  ourself  here  in  this 
world  of  time. 

Such  was  the  life  of  Jesus.  And  Jesus  said,  "  No 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  Me."  "By 
Him  we  all  have  access  unto  the  Father ; "  and  so 
by  the  power  of  Christ  we  may  all  come  near  to  God 
too,  and  have  from  out  the  open  door  of  His  sanctu- 
ary to  which  we  have  fled.  His  view  of  mortal  life 
and  all  its  interests.  For  us,  too,  this  world's  exist- 
ence may  subside  into  its  clearly  marked  circles,  and 
we  may  see  as  God  sees  where  each  circle  ends ;  see 
how  the  selfishnesses  soon  die  out ;  see  how  the  affec- 
tions sweep  out  into  wider  lines ;  see  how  nothing 
but  the  highest  loves  reach  out  into  infinity  and  sent 
life  forward  into  eternity.  These  times,  when  we 
are  nearest  to  God,  are  the  times  when  this  world's 
things  show  their  true  values  to  us.     Do  you  not 


122  THE  SANCTUARY   OF  GOD. 

know  that  ?  Do  you  remember  how  it  all  looked  to 
you  when  you  came  home  from  the  funeral,  not  mor- 
bid with  hopeless  sorrow,  but  seeming  to  be  above 
the  world,  and  to  be  standing  with  the  friend  who 
had  gone,  in  the  presence  of  the  throne  of  God?  Do 
you  remember  how  things  changed  their  relative  im- 
portance to  you  then,  how  the  last  were  first  and  the 
first  were  last,  as  they  shall  be  on  the  judgment 
day  ?  Could  any  one  have  made  you  wretched  then 
by  coming  and  telling  you  of  a  broken  bank  ?  You 
were  above  complaints  and  small  trials.  You  had 
entered  into  the  sanctuary  of  God,  and  you  saw  the 
end  of  these  things. 

Some  of  us  who  have  thought  about  it  must  have 
sometimes  been  puzzled  just  what  to  think  about 
the  great  men  who  are  called  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
—  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Amos.  Sometimes  they  are  the 
foretellers  of  future  events ;  but  sometimes  they  are 
apparently  only  the  proclaimers  of  present  duty, 
preaching  with  fearful  earnestness  and  eloquence 
the  righteousness  of  God  to  an  unrighteous  people. 
Which  was  their  office?  Are  they  preachers  to  a 
present  or  foretellers  of  a  future  ?  Does  not  what 
we  have  said  seem  to  show  that  the  two  offices  are 
really  one  ?  To  see  the  present  deeply  enough  is  to 
see  the  future.  Tell  me  perfectly  what  a  man  is, 
and  I  will  tell  you  what  he  will  be,  such  is  the  fear- 
ful logical  continuity  that  runs  through  our  life. 
These  were  men  full  of  the  spirit  of  God,  in  intensest 
sympathy  with  Him.  They  abode  in  His  sanctuary, 
and  so  they  saw,  as  He  saw,  what  Jerusalem  and 
Samaria  and  Babylon  were  worth.     They  saw  what 


THE   SANCTUARY  OF   GOD.  123 

sort  of  life  was  in  those  places  and  the  men  who 
ruled  them.  So  they  knew  how  long  their  life  could 
last.  They  understood  the  end  of  these  men.  So 
they  were  prophets ;  and  all  prophecy  that  is  more 
than  mere  jugglery  must  be  of  this  sort.  All  true 
foresight  must  be  insight  first. 

We  hear  of  the  men  who  have  the  care  of  the 
Atlantic  cable,  standing  with  this  end  of  it  when  it 
is  broken,  and  telling  just  where  the  interruption  is. 
They  can  tell  how  long  the  piece  is  that  they  hold  in 
their  hands ;  just  in  what  unseen  spot  under  the  sea 
the  broken  end  of  it  will  be  found.  They  say,  "  It 
has  broken  here,  or  here,  or  here."  And  so  there  are 
some  people  of  acute  spiritual  perception  who  can 
accurately  tell  the  worth  and  promise  of  the  men  they 
meet.  Can  tell  by  a  sense  of  touch  which  they  can- 
not define  themselves,  how  much  real  vitality  there  is 
in  them,  how  long  they  will  last.  You  come  to  such 
a  person  with  your  latest  idol,  the  new  sensation  who 
has  started  your  enthusiasm,  and  you  say  eagerly, 
"  Here,  the  coming  man  has  come.  Here  is  the  first 
bit  of  the  millennium.  Here  is  a  man  who  will  have 
long  influence,  and  change  the  current  of  things  to 
the  end."  But  he  takes  your  idol's  life  into  his 
hands,  and  feels  instantly  that  it  is  not  what  you 
think  it.  He  understands  its  end.  He  says  sadly,  "  No, 
this  man  is  bright  and  energetic,  but  he  is  narrow,  he 
is  selfish,  he  is  false ;  his  end  will  be  there,"  placing 
his  finger  on  the  limit  of  the  man's  selfhood,  which  is 
the  farthest  that  such  a  character  as  his  can  reach. 
Another  sends  back  its  record  from  a  little  more  dis- 
tant point.     Only  when  he  touches  the  character  of 


124  THE   SANCTUARY   OF  GOD. 

a  thoroughly  unselfish  and  true  soul,  given  up  to 
God,  does  he  feel  the  thrill  of  a  life  that  has  no  end, 
but  runs  around  the  whole  circle  of  duty,  within  and 
parallel  to  the  life  of  God  himself.  Such  men  there 
are.  Such  tests  and  judges  of  their  brothers'  lives,  — 
not  arrogant  and  self-asserting,  but  humble  and  meek. 
Such  a  man's  thoughts  will  not  be  like  our  thoughts. 
He  will  know  how  to  estimate  the  worth  of  men's 
lives.  He  will  know  whom  to  help.  He  will  leave 
a  man  crying  for  his  lost  fortune,  and  go  to  a  sinner 
who  is  struggling  not  to  lose  his  soul,  sure  that  his  is 
the  deeper  need.  He  will  devote  himself  to  a  little 
insignificant-looking  shoot,  that  just  peeps  above  the 
ground,  and  keeps  the  burning  sun  off  of  it  carefully, 
leaving  the  great  tall  weed  by  its  side  to  scorch  as  the 
sun  pleases.  Men  may  call  him  foolish,  but  wis- 
dom will  be  justified  of  this  one  of  her  children  by 
and  by,  when  the  weed  has  fallen  and  rotted,  and 
the  little  shoot  is  grown  to  the  great  tree,  with  the 
fowls  of  the  air  among  its  branches  and  tired  men 
resting  under  its  shade.  These  are  the  men  who 
keep  alive  true  standards  in  the  world.  The  men 
who  live  in  the  sanctuary  of  God,  and  so  understand 
the  end  of  these  men. 

The  great  question  after  all  is  this :  Shall  we  judge 
man  by  God  or  God  by  man  ?  Does  light  and  under- 
standing flow  upward  or  downward  ?  If  we  judge 
man  by  God,  at  once  we  have  these  true  and  discrimi- 
nating thoughts  of  human  life.  We  have  absolute 
standards.  We  have  a  test  of  the  worth  of  all  we 
do  or  see.  But  if  we  judge  God  by  man,  we  only 
have  over  again  what  the  world  has  been  so  full  of, — 


TFiE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD.  125 

the  persuasions  of  self-interest,  the  disbelief  in  ab- 
solute righteousness,  the  changing  standards  of  the 
changing  times.  Men  have  gone  into  the  sanctuary 
of  their  own  selfishness,  the  sanctuary  of  themselves, 
and  straightway  they  have  seemed  to  see  an  end  of 
God.  All  sense  of  a  supreme  and  awful  Fatherhood 
on  which  all  men  depended,  to  which  all  action  must 
go  back  for  judgment,  has  been  lost.  No  higher 
power  than  the  human  has  seemed  to  be  moving 
under  and  giving  meaning  to  the  events  of  ordinary 
life.  All  spiritual  study  of  the  world's  course  became 
impossible.  A  low  and  dreary  economy  became  the 
main-spring  of  the  universe.  How  much  we  have 
seen  of  that  spirit  just  now  in  relation  to  this  fire  in 
Boston  !  Revolting  from  the  irreverent  and  repulsive 
spirit  of  religious  competency  which  undertakes  to 
say  just  why  the  fire  came,  just  why  it  destroyed  this 
man's  business  and  spared  that  other's,  just  what 
God  meant  to  teach  men  by  it,  another  school  has 
been  very  loud  in  saying  that  there  was  no  spiritual 
teaching  in  it,  that  it  contained  no  higher  lessons  than 
those  of  more  careful  building  and  a  better  govern- 
ment. That  it  contained  those  lessons  no  wise  man 
can  doubt.  God  grant  that  we  may  heed  them  !  We 
shall  surely  suffer  if  we  do  not  heed  them.  But  if 
there  be  a  God  who  cares  more  for  His  children's 
souls  than  for  their  bodies,  to  whom  the  body  is 
always  manifestly  temporal  and  the  soul  eternal, 
then  for  soul  as  well  as  body  there  must  be  a  meaning 
in  what  we  still  call  such  a  visitation  of  God  as  this. 
No  man  may  read  his  brother's  lessons  and  say, 
"  This  is  what  God  meant  for  you  ; "  but  every  man 


120  THE   SANCTUARY   OF  GOD. 

must  read  his  own,  his  lessons  of  patience,  spirituality, 
charity,  and  believe  with  all  his  heart  that  God  has 
lessons  for  his  brethren  too,  and  pray  that  in  what 
ought  to  be  such  a  Pentecostal  time,  his  brethren,  too, 
may  hear  God  speak  His  wonderful  things,  each  in  his 
own  tongue. 

But  now  let  us  gather  and  keep  the  meanings  of 
this  verse  of  Asaph  for  ourselves.  I  am  sure  that  we 
need  them.  I  am  speaking  to  men  and  women  who 
are  in  the  midst  of  the  pressing  moral  problems  that 
cannot  be  escaped.  You  see  wicked  men  prosperous, 
and  you  say,  "How  can  I  believe  in  God?"  Oidy, 
my  dear  friend,  only  by  coming  close  to  God,  and 
learning  by  deep  and  sweet  experience  that  He  has 
better  things  to  give  to  His  beloved  than  what  men 
call  prosperity.  The  peace  that  passeth  understand- 
ing, the  calm  rest  of  forgiven  sin,  and  of  a  soul 
trusted  away  from  itself  into  its  Saviour's  hands.  To 
one  who  knows  what  those  high  blessings  mean,  how 
little  does  it  seem  that  other  hands  should  fill  them- 
selves with  the  shining  trifles  which  its  hands  are  too 
full  to  hold.  Think  how  it  will  seem  in  heaven ! 
Standing  before  the  throne,  filled  with  the  unspeak- 
able vision,  conscious  through  all  the  glory  of  the 
culture  that  suffering  has  brought,  hurrying  with  joy 
on  the  high  missions  of  the  Lord,  who  will  look  back 
then  and  be  troubled  an  instant  at  the  recollection  of 
how  a  wicked  man  sat  at  a  little  richer  table,  or  had 
a  little  higher  seat  in  the  market-place  when  we  were 
here  on  earth  ? 

Ah,  but,  you  say,  that  is  not  my  trouble.  It  goes 
deeper   than   tluit.     It  does  not  merel}^  trouble  me 


THE  SANCTUAr.Y   OF   GOD.  127 

that  others  have  these  things.  I  cannot  keep  my- 
self from  seeking  them.  How  shall  I  overcome  the 
temptation  that  is  always  driving  me  to  let  my  reli- 
gion go,  and  to  plunge  into  this  chase  after  wealth 
and  comfort?  Again  the  answer  is  the  same  :  Enter 
into  the  sanctuary  of  God.  You  cannot  let  the  lower 
go  until  the  higher  first  has  wliolly  filled  and  occu- 
pied you.  Come  with  your  sins,  and  find  the  peace 
and  bliss  of  being  forgiven.  Come  with  your  lonely 
heart,  lonely  in  all  its  deepest  wants,  in  spite  of  all 
the  tenderest  companionships  of  life,  and  find  the  per- 
fect happiness  of  Christ's  communion ;  then,  filled 
with  this  new  strength,  when  you  turn  round  and 
say,  "  Now,  let  me  sec  if  I  can  fight  down  my  ene- 
mies, can  conquer  my  temptations,"  behold  your 
enemies  will  be  away  down  there  beneath  your  feet, 
you  will  have  passed  out  above  your  temptations,  and 
will  only  see  them  raging  and  tossing  impotently,  as 
one  who  stands  upon  the  sunlit  peak  sees  the  vain 
fury  of  the  thunderstorm  beautiful  and  not  terrible 
below  him. 

That  cannot  come  in  this  life,  you  say.  But  I  do 
not  know.  There  have  been  men  and  women  with 
lives  so  calm  and  high  that  they  seemed  to  have 
reached  it,  even  on  this  tumultuous  earth.  Hardly 
a  flake  of  s[)ray  from  the  storm  below  them  ever 
seemed  to  dash  up  and  wet  their  steadfast  and  placid 
feet.  But  whether  it  can  come  in  this  life  or  not, 
the  struggle  for  it  makes  the  two  lives  one.  Already 
to  him  who  is  working  towards  it,  part  of  its  peace  is 
given.     The  rock  runs  out  under  the  sea,  and  your 


128  THE   SANCTUARY   OF   GOD. 

feet  may  be  firm  upon  it  even  while  the  waves  are 
still  breast  high. 

Such  be  the  peace  in  Christ  which  shall  make  all 
of  our  lives  strong  through  all  their  struggle,  until 
at  last  we  enter  into  that  rest  which  remaineth  for 
the  people  of  God. 


VIII. 

COME  AND  SEE. 

"  Philip  saith  unto  him,  '  Come  and  See.' "    John  i.  46. 

Twice  in  the  same  chapter  these  same  words, 
"Come  and  See,"  are  spoken.  Once  they  are  the 
reply  of  Jesus  to  two  of  John's  disciples,  who  having 
heard  John  speak  of  Him,  are  following  Him,  and 
when  He  turns  and  sees  them  ask  Him,  "  Rabbi, 
where  dwellest  thou  ?  "  Again,  they  are  the  words 
of  Philip,  who  having  himself  become  the  disciple  of 
Jesus,  findeth  Nathanael,  and  saith  unto  him,  "  We 
have  found  Him  of  whom  Moses  in  the  law  and  the 
prophets  did  write,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  son  of 
Joseph.  And  Nathanael  said.  Can  there  any  good 
thing  come  out  of  Nazareth?  Then  Philip  saith 
unto  him,  Come  and  see."  And  these  words, 
thus  twice  repeated,  are  characteristic  words  of 
Christianity.  They  have  a  ring  about  them  that 
belongs  to  all  our  religion.  "  Come  and  see !  "  They 
invite  inquiry.  They  proclaim  a  religion  which  is  to 
have  its  own  clear  tests,  which  it  invites  every  one  to 
use.  It  is  an  open  faith.  It  will  do  nothing  in  a 
corner.  It  will  be  recognizable  in  its  workings  by 
men's  ordinary  perceptions.  I  need  not  remind  you, 
if  you  know  your  Bibles,  how  common  such  appeals 
are  everywhere.     *'Try  the  spirits  whether  they  be 


130  COME  AND   SEE. 

of  God."  "  Prove  all  things."  "  Go  and  tell  what 
things  ye  see  and  hear."  "  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear, 
let  him  hear."  There  are  institutions  that  shut  their 
doors  and  windows,  and  say  to  the  world  of  ordinary 
men,  "  You  can  know  nothing  of  what  goes  on  in 
here.  If  you  come  in  you  must  come  in  blindfold,  and 
let  yourself  be  led,  and  examine  nothing.  There  are 
no  tests  within  your  power  —  you  must  just  be  blind 
and  obey."  Christianity,  however  she  may  have  been 
misrepresented  sometimes,  has  no  such  tone  as  that ; 
but  everywhere  she  throws  the  doors  of  her  secret 
places,  of  her  most  sacred  doctrine  and  her  holiest 
character,  wide  open,  and  cries  to  all  men  as  to  beings 
who  in  the  healthy  use  of  their  human  faculties  are 
capable  of  judging,  "  Come  and  see."  In  that  call 
she  strikes  the  keynote  of  intelligent,  and  so  of  truly 
devout  religion. 

It  is  the  necessity  of  Christianity  thus  to  appeal 
to  the  observation  of  men.  She  openly  declares  that 
she  seeks  certain  moral  results  of  which  men  are  able 
to  judge.  Think  how  Christ  came  into  the  world 
bringing  the  mysterious  life  of  a  higher  world  with 
Him !  He  told  plainly  what  He  came  for.  It  was 
to  renew  men's  spiritual  life.  It  was  to  make  men 
better.  It  was  to  save  His  people  from  their  sins. 
There  were  profounder  and  more  mystic  aspects  of 
salvation,  subtle  and  exalted  experiences,  serene  and 
sacred  emotions,  into  which  He  offered  to  lead  His 
followers,  where  the  ordinary  eyes  of  men  were  not 
prepared  to  follow  them  ;  but  every  statement  of  His 
purpose  involved  this  as  preliminary  to  everything 
beside.     That  His  disciples  should  first  of  all  become 


COME  AND   SEE.  131 

different  men  in  those  things  which  other  men  could 
see  and  understand,  that  they  should  be  braver,  truer, 
humbler,  purer.  A  pure  philosophy  or  a  pure  mysti- 
cism, dealing  only  in  abstract  thought  or  feeling,  has 
no  test  for  ordinary  men.  They  cannot  tell  whether 
it  is  true  or  false.  But  a  religion  which  must  make 
men's  lives  different,  must  change  characters,  or  be  a 
failure,  has  to  be  always  open  to  men's  judgment.  It 
has  to  work  its  miracles  in  the  light.  It  has  to  take 
its  man  or  its  generation,  and  standing  out  on  a  plat- 
form where  there  can  be  no  concealment  and  no 
jugglery  and  to  say,  "  See,  I  will  make  this  man  into 
this  different  man.  I  will  make  this  bad  man  into 
this  good  man  ; "  and  all  the  world  knows  whether 
the  experiment  succeeds  or  fails.  The  test  is  in  the 
hands  of  every  man  who  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween good  living  and  bad  living.  She  cannot  fall 
back  upon  certain  unintelligible  experiences,  certain 
unseen  changes  which  she  says  have  taken  place  in 
her  subject  but  do  not  show  themselves  upon  the 
outside.  If  they  do  not  show  themselves  on  the  out- 
side they  are  unreal.  They  are  such  in  their  very 
nature  that  if  they  are  real  they  must  show  them- 
selves on  the  outside.  If  the  magician  stands  before 
me  on  the  stage  and  points  to  a  lion  or  a  dog  and 
says,  "  I  will  change  this  brute  into  a  man,"  I  have 
the  test  in  my  own  eyes.  It  will  not  do  for  him  to 
say  while  I  see  the  brute  still  standing  brutishly 
there,  "  Oh,  but  the  substance  is  changed  too  deep 
for  you  to  see,  and  that  the  old  form  remains  the 
same  is  nothing."  A  changed  form  must  betoken 
the  changed  substance.    I  must  see  the  upright  figure 


132  COME   AND   SEE. 

and  watch  the  intelligent  eye,  and  hear  the  articulate 
voice  of  manhood,  or  it  is  no  man  —  there  is  no  mira- 
cle. So  Christianity  by  its  very  necessity  is  compelled 
to  be  judged  of  men. 

I  should  like  to  speak  to-night  of  some  of  the  gen- 
eral principles  of  truth-seeking  and  truth-getting, 
first  in  themselves,  and  then  in  their  relation  to 
Christianity.  It  is  the  subject  that  is  suggested  by 
this  invitation  to  observation  and  experiment,  —  this 
"  Come  and  see  "  of  the  convinced  disciple,  Philip. 

There  are,  then,  two  great  methods  by  which  men 
arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  truth.  One  is  the  method 
of  authority  and  the  other  the  method  of  experience. 
I  know  what  I  know  either  because  some  one  has 
told  me  of  it,  or  because  I  have  observed  it  for  my- 
self. To  say  nothing  of  the  comparative  trustworthi- 
ness of  the  two  methods,  everybody  can  feel  the 
superior  vividness  of  the  second.  What  I  see  for 
myself  is  so  much  more  real  and  vital  than  what  I 
hear  from  another.  The  best  teacher  is  always  he 
who  says,  "  Come  and  see."  The  brilliant  lecturer 
on  the  laws  of  light  stands  at  his  desk,  and  in  the 
choicest  and  clearest  English  describes  to  me  the 
action  or  the  composition  of  the  ray,  and  I  think  I 
know  all  about  it ;  but  suddenly  he  turns  to  his  in- 
strument and  makes  me  see  the  ray  of  light  doing 
its  action  or  unfolding  into  its  constituents,  and  my 
knowledge  is  of  a  new  sort.  The  method  of  authority 
has  been  changed  for  the  method  of  experience.  We 
are  like  the  Samaritans  who  said  to  the  woman, 
"  Now  we  believe,  not  because  of  thy  saying,  for  we 
have  heard  Him  ourselves." 


COME   AND   SEE.  133 

There  is  always  this  distinction  ;  but  yet  remember 
that  where  truth  seems  to  be  received  by  the  method 
of  authority,  still  the  method  of  experience  must 
have  preceded  or  else  the  other  could  not  legitimately 
have  been  used.  There  must  have  been  a  previous 
conviction  of  the  trustworthiness  of  the  teacher  got 
by  our  experience  either  of  him  or  of  some  who  have 
told  us  about  him,  or  else  we  should  have  no  right 
to  believe  what  he  says.  So  all  comes  back  at  last 
to  the  method  of  experience.  The  invitation,  "  Come 
and  see,"  is  the  invitation  into  all  truth.  When 
Jesus  had  risen  from  the  dead,  you  remember,  His 
disciple  refused  to  believe  till  with  his  own  hand  he 
had  felt  the  wounds  in  the  hands  and  feet  and  side. 
And  Jesus  gently  rebuking  him,  compares,  as  it  were, 
the  methods  of  authority  and  experience,  of  faith 
and  science,  so  to  speak,  to  the  advantage  of  the 
former  when  He  says,  "  Thomas,  because  thou  hast 
seen  thou  hast  believed.  Blessed  are  they  that  have 
not  seen  and  yet  have  believed."  And  yet  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it,  is  not  His  rebuke  really  that 
Thomas  had  not  used  the  method  of  experience 
enough,  not  that  he  demands  it  too  much  ?  He  re- 
bukes him  that  in  all  the  years  that  they  had  been 
together  he  had  not  observed  Him  deeply  enough  to 
learn  His  character  and  understand  His  words.  Is 
He  not  pleading,  not  against  science,  but  for  a  higher 
science?  Must  it  not  be  always  so?  Must  not  all 
truth  come  to  us  through  the  faculties  that  God  has 
given  to  us,  faithfully  employed.  Jesus  always  asked 
the  people  to  believe  what  He  told  them  of  heaven, 
of  the  judgment  day,  of  His  own  mysterious  nature, 


134  COMB  AND   SEE. 

in  virtue  of  what  they  saw,  —  the  sick  man  made 
well  and  the  poor  made  rich.  "  If  I  do  not  the 
works  of  my  Father  believe  me  not,"  a  direct  appeal 
to  experience.  "  Come  and  see,  and  according  to 
what  you  see  believe  or  disbelieve  in  the  awful 
unsearchable  truths  of  God  and  the  celestial  life." 

What  follows,  then  ?  Having  this  method  of  truth 
we  have  no  right  to  expect  the  attainment  of  truth 
except  in  the  use  of  this  method.  We  have  no  right 
to  count  that  as  truth  which  has  come  to  us  without 
its  use,  without  some  steady  application  of  our  facul- 
ties to  the  matter  which  is  in  question.  But  how 
much  people  do  hold  to  be  true  or  not  true  which 
they  have  reached  in  no  such  way.  Men  are  preju- 
diced, we  say,  and  prejudice  means  simply  this  :  "  A 
judging  before ; "  a  forming  an  opinion  before  you 
have  any  grounds  for  an  opinion ;  a  judgment  be- 
fore evidence ;  a  making  up  your  mind  before  you 
have  come  and  seen.  Do  we  not  recognize  our  old 
vexatious  friends  ?  A  man  is  unwilling  to  say  of  any 
subject  that  he  has  no  opinion  about  it  because  he 
has  had  no  chance  to  examine  it  (as  any  sensible  man 
must  say  of  a  hundred  subjects),  and  so  he  makes  up 
an  opinion  without  examination,  and  it  is  only  a 
prejudice  that  he  flaunts  in  the  world's  eyes.  A  man 
would  like  a  certain  thing  to  be  true,  and  so  he  says 
over  and  over  again,  "  This  is  true."  He  would  like 
his  house  to  be  just  so  high ;  he  would  like  the  Bible 
to  be  verbally  inspired;  he  would  like  that  there 
should  be  no  future  punishment,  and  so  he  says  over 
and  over  again,  "  This  is  so,"  and  never  comes 
squarely  and  fully  up  to  the  facts  to  see  whether  it 


COME   AND   SEE.  lbt> 

is  SO  or  not,  or  if  he  does  meet  the  facts  some  day  he 
meets  them  so  encased  in  his  armor  of  prejudice  that 
they  are  powerless  to  break  it.  A  good  man  —  and 
this  is  one  of  the  commonest  of  things  —  thinks  that 
in  order  to  keep  the  world  sound  and  good  and  healthy 
such  and  such  a  statement  ought  to  be  true ;  thinks 
that  the  world  will  go  to  ruin  if  it  is  not  true,  and  so 
he  says,  "  It  must  be  true,"  and  there  is  his  prejudice 
full  made.  He  may  be  right  or  may  be  wrong,  but 
either  way  he  is  prejudiced,  and  so  feeble.  He  has 
never  got  up  to  the  facts  where  strength  lies.  Indeed, 
I  think  this  last  is  one  of  the  hardest  cases  to  make 
perfectly  clear  either  to  ourselves  or  others.  It  is  no 
doubt  a  certain  presumption  for  the  truth  of  an  idea 
that  the  world  would  be  wiser  and  better  if  it  were 
true.  If  we  could  be  perfectly  sure  that  the  world 
would  be  wiser  and  better  for  it,  it  would  be  a  very 
strong  presumption  of  its  truth  ;  but,  after  all,  it  could 
be  no  more  than  a  presumption.  Finally,  we  must  go 
and  see  whether  it  be  true ;  we  must  face  facts,  and 
our  presumption  could  only  send  us  with  more  inter- 
est and  earnestness  to  the  facts  which  alone  could 
give  us  an  answer. 

These  are  some  forms  of  prejudice  as  concerns  our 
estimates  of  truth.  The  same  is  true  concerning  also 
our  estimate  of  persons.  Indeed,  to  this  last  the  term 
"  prejudice  "  is  perhaps  more  commonly  applied ;  at 
any  rate,  it  was  a  case  of  personal  prejudice  that 
drew  out  the  invitation  of  our  text.  Personal  prej- 
udice is  the  formation  of  an  opinion  of  a  person's 
character  before  we  have  the  ground  for  an  opinion. 
Here  was  Nathanael  who  heard  Philip  tell  of  Jesus. 


136  COME   AND   SEE. 

All  he  knew  of  him  was  that  he  came  from  the  town 
of  Nazareth.  At  once  he  formed  an  opinion  of  Him; 
He  could  not  be  great  or  good  and  come  from  such  a 
place.  "  Can  any  good  thing  come  out  of  Nazareth  ?  " 
The  answer  is  wisdom  itself :  "  Come  and  see  the 
man  whom  you  dislike.  Get  your  evidence  and  then 
make  your  judgment."  I  know  some  one  thing  about 
a  man,  some  one  act  that  he  did  when  he  was  a  boy, 
perhaps  not  even  that,  something  about  his  parents 
or  his  relatives,  something  about  his  birthplace,  or 
the  school  he  went  to,  or  his  place  of  business,  or  his 
business  partnerships.  Now,  it  is  almost  impossible, 
as  we  are  made,  that  such  things  should  not  influence 
us,  that  they  should  not  give  us  some  first  impression 
of  what  kind  of  a  man  we  shall  find  him  when  we 
come  to  know  him ;  but  to  let  such  first  impressions 
magnify  and  harden  themselves  into  opinions,  to  let 
them  influence  our  action,  to  let  them  decide  us  not 
to  know  the  man  whom  we  so  rashly  judge,  this  is 
personal  prejudice.  And  yet  who  of  us  is  not  guilty 
of  it?  Who  of  us  does  not  know  of  some  man  against 
whom  he  has  taken  a  dislike,  whom  he  would  avoid 
or  depreciate,  or  perhaps  harm  to-morrow  if  he  were 
brought  in  contact  with  him,  whom  yet  he  must  hon- 
estly own  that  he  does  not  know,  that  he  has  no  real 
ground  for  thinking  ill  of,  a  man  whose  character  he 
has  never  "  come  to  and  seen,"  by  any  such  experi- 
ence of  him  as  can  justify  him  in  having  any  real 
opinion  about  him  whatever  ?  How  many  men  will 
go  up  to  the  polls  and  vote  for  a  President  of  the 
United  States,  some  on  one  side,  some  on  the  other, 
making  believe  that  they  have  judgments  about  the 


COME  AND   SEE.  137 

men,  when  they  have  really  nothing  but  prejudices  ? 
They  will  vote  for  and  against  phantoms  of  their  own 
fancy,  and  not  clearly  understood  characters.  Why, 
take  away  our  prejudices  about  each  other,  and  how 
much  do  we  know  of  one  another's  life  ?  How  much 
solid  judgment  is  there  that  is  really  full  of  intelli- 
gent experience  ?  I  think  that  when  we  die  and  go 
together  to  the  world  of  perfect  light,  we  shall  have 
to  begin  almost  all  our  knowledge  of  one  another  en- 
tirely afresh.  We  shall  see  that  these  ill-considered 
fancies  that  we  have  about  each  other  are  good  for 
nothing.  They  will  all  be  swept  away  out  of  the 
clear  atmosphere  of  that  celestial  life.  Our  deep  af- 
fections, our  real  loves  and  hates,  we  shall  keep,  our 
trivial  fondnesses,  our  foolish  likes  and  dislikes,  will 
go  together.  We  shall  find  by  our  side  upon  the  sea 
of  glass  —  if  God's  mercy  bring  us  there  — some  saint 
whom  an  inconsistent  habit  or  a  scandalous  report 
has  made  us  think  that  we  dislike,  and  find,  as  we 
look  him  through  and  through  with  the  insight  of 
that  perfect  world,  and  know  him  for  the  first  time, 
that  we  cannot  hate,  but  must  completely  love,  so  no- 
ble, true,  and  pure  a  soul  as  his.  We  shall  leave  these 
clouds  behind,  as  we  get  higher  up  the  mountain. 
And  this  freedom  from  personal  prejudice,  this  really 
sympathetic  knowledge  of  one  another,  may  begin 
here,  and  will  be  one  of  the  purest  earthly  foretastes 
of  heaven. 

You  see,  then,  whither  we  are  always  being  tempted 
if  we  could  only  hear  the  invitation.  It  is  to  trust- 
worthy knowledge  of  the  facts  of  life,  away  from 
phantoms   and  fancies   and  our  mere  imaginations. 


138  COME  AND   SEE. 

You  think  that  work  is  disgraceful  and  degrading, 
and  that  taste  and  true  culture  ripen  only  in  idle 
leisure.  "  Come  and  see."  Set  yourself  to  work. 
You  know  nothing  about  it.  Try  it,  and  see  what  a 
good  hfe  it  brings.  You  think  that  serious  thought 
is  stupid,  that  nothing  but  trifling  dissipation  is  in- 
teresting and  exciting.  "  Come  and  see."  Try  it, 
and  find  that  there  is  an  exhilaration  about  a  high 
pursuit  of  ideas  that  is  as  far  beyond  all  mere  frivol- 
ity as  climbing  a  mountain  peak  is  better  than  run- 
ning races  in  the  valley.  This  appeal  to  experiment 
and  fact  is  the  great  hope  of  mankind.  This  is  the 
very  soul  of  modern  science.  Philosophers  had  been 
making  theories  about  what  the  world  ought  to  be 
and  what  nature  ought  to  do.  "  Come  and  see,"  said 
Bacon.  That  was  the  watchword  of  the  inductive 
philosophy,  and  to-day  the  world  is  full  of  men  just 
patiently  seeing  what  Nature  is  doing,  learning  her 
by  the  humble  wisdom  of  experimental  science.  And 
in  religion,  bigotry  and  superstition  are  the  result  of 
men's  theorizing  and  speculating  about  what  God 
ought  to  be.  "  Come  and  see ;  come  and  see  what 
God  is,"  cries  the  reassuring  voice  of  Him  who  would 
not  hide  Himself  from,  but  show  Himself  to.  His  chil- 
dren, and  out  of  a  devout  and  humble  study  of  His 
words  and  works,  out  of  a  readiness  to  take  whatever 
He  shall  show  it,  there  comes  the  large,  earnest,  true 
religion  which  really  elevates  and  saves  the  soul. 

So  everywhere  this  invitation  rings  through  the 
world.  True,  the  sight  which  we  send  out  in  answer 
to  the  invitation  must  be  the  large  use  of  all  our 
faculties.     Not  merely  the  outward  eye  must  see,  the 


COME  AND  SEE.  1S» 

mind  must  see  as  well.  It  is  not  answering  the 
whole  invitation  unless  the  whole  man  goes  and  sees 
with  all  his  powers  of  vision.  The  eye  sees  phenom- 
ena ;  the  soul  sees  causes  underlying  and  connecting 
the  phenomena.  We  must  not  stop  merely  with 
what  the  eye  sees,  and,  having  written  down  the 
facts  we  have  discovered,  call  that  the  all  of  science, 
and  brand  all  beyond  as  superstition.  It  is  not 
superstition,  not  prejudice,  but  science  still,  spiritual 
science,  when  the  mind  sees  a  causal  will,  out  of 
which  all  phenomena  proceed,  and  the  heart  feels  a 
mighty  love  beating  through  all  the  ordered  system. 
It  is  not  well  to  live  and  see  only  from  the  eyes  and 
brain  outward. 

To  every  man  there  is  a  fundamental  division  of 
this  universe  that  the  oldest  philosophies  have  recog- 
nized. It  is  not  conceit,  it  is  the  mere  law  of  his 
personality  that  makes  it.  He  is  on  one  side,  and  all 
the  rest  of  the  universe  is  on  the  other.  I  is  one  di- 
vision. All  the  rest,  all  that  is  not  I,  is  on  the  other. 
Out  of  that  rest  of  the  universe  comes  the  endless 
call  to  knowledge.  "  Come  and  see  "  whispers  in 
every  wind,  seems  written  in  the  mystery  of  every 
sunset  and  starlight,  cries  pathetically  to  him  out  of 
every  strange  movement  of  this  human  nature  that 
his  heart  hears  when  to  the  ear  all  is  still.  To  every 
man  it  is  as  if  the  rest  of  the  universe  were  made  for 
him  to  use  his  faculties  upon,  to  learn,  to  know,  to 
love,  to  hate,  as,  stand  where  he  will,  the  horizon 
forms  a  circle  about  every  man.  To  say  that  we 
know  that  world,  before  our  faculties  have  met  and 
grappled  it,  is  prejudice  and  folly.     To  be  at  work 


140  COME  AND  SEE. 

really  learning  it,  in  any  part  of  it,  however  small,  is 
noble  and  makes  us  noble.  That  is  the  everlasting 
and  unspeakable  superiority  of  any  work  in  life, 
however  small,  that  is  true,  over  every  work  in  life, 
however  great,  that  is  false. 

So  far  I  have  been  speaking  of  the  duty  of  the 
learner,  but  the  duty  of  every  teacher  becomes 
plain,  also,  from  what  we  have  been  saying.  And 
every  man  is  a  teacher,  or  wants  to  be  sometimes. 
Every  man  sometimes  knows  and  believes  something 
which  he  desires  to  make  his  neighbor  also  know 
and  believe.  How  shall  he  do  it?  If  he  is  wise 
he  will  try  to  take  his  friend  to  the  same  facts 
that  enlightened  him,  and  make  him  see  them.  He 
will  not  merely  try  to  get  assent,  but  to  get  convic- 
tion. He  will  say,  "Come  and  see,"  if  it  is  possi- 
ble. This  was  the  admirable  wisdom  of  Philip. 
What  had  converted  him  was  the  personal  sight  of 
Jesus.  He  had  no  other  religion  but  that.  He 
meant  to  follow  Him  because  he  had  seen  Him,  and 
was  satisfied  in  seeing  Him.  He  might  have  gone  to 
work  to  argue  with  Nathanael  a  multitude  of  side 
questions,  to  show  that  Nazareth  was  not  such  a  bad 
place  after  all ;  that  Jesus  had  escaped  its  contami- 
nation, or  that,  indeed,  He  was  born  in  Bethlehem, 
and  not  in  Nazareth  at  all.  But  he  was  too  wise  and 
too  eager  for  that.  Jesus  Himself  was  His  own  evi- 
dence. To  get  his  friend  face  to  face  with  Jesus  — 
to  make  the  guileless  Nathanael  see  with  spiritual 
sympathy  the  spiritual  Christ.  This  was  his  object. 
This  was  what  he  did.  And  oh,  if  every  preacher 
could  only  do  it  too  !     If,  instead  of  arguing  a  hun- 


COME   AND   SEE.  141 

dred  half-relevant  questions,  the  apostles  who  fill  our 
pulpits  were  all  crying  like  this  wise,  honest  apostle 
of  Bethsaida,  "We  have  found  the  Messiah,  come 
and  see;"  and  when  men  hesitated  and  objected, 
crying  still,  "Come  and  see,"  merely  laboring  to 
bring  the  souls  of  men  into  the  presence  of  the  per- 
sonal Christ,  to  make  them  look  upon  His  face,  and 
hear  His  voice,  and  feel  His  heart  beating,  I  am  sure 
that  our  pulpits  would  change  weakness  for  power, 
and  our  churches  be  full  of  life.  The  really  strong 
and  effective  preaching  that  the  world  has  seen  al- 
ways has  been  just  this.  Men  who  had  seen  Jesus, 
wise  or  ignorant,  strong  or  weak,  crying  to  their 
brethren  to  come  and  see  Him,  too. 

And  so  of  all  teaching.  A  man  insults  me  if  he 
tries  to  force  himself  on  me  merely  repeating  his 
opinion  and  expecting  me  to  receive  it  because  it  is 
his.  But  a  man  honors  me  if  he  takes  me  back  to 
the  source  where  he  found  his  truth,  and  bids  me 
drink  where  he  drank.  I  cannot  take  another  man's 
truth,  but  he  can  show  me  where  he  got  his,  and  I 
will  get  my  own  and  thank  him.  A  man  trying  to 
make  you  take  his  opinion  just  because  he  has  thor- 
oughly adopted  it  and  likes  it,  is  like  a  man  who  had 
been  cured  of  his  palsy,  thinking  that  therefore  he 
can  cure  yours  if  he  touches  you.  All  that  he  can 
do,  evidently,  is  to  take  you  to  the  doctor  or  give 
you  the  medicine  that  cured  him.  And  yet  the  land 
rings  with  mere  positiveness.  On  every  platform 
men  are  shouting  over  and  over  their  loud  persua- 
sions, and  deafening  us  into  assent.  How  powerful 
it  seems  at  first !     How  powerless  it  is  in  the  long 


142  COME  AND   SEE. 

run  !  Mere  assertion  may  force  assent,  but  it  never 
creates  belief.  Of  all  the  causes  and  theories  and 
political  and  social  parties  that  are  vociferating  in 
our  land  to-day,  it  is  comfortable  to  know  that  none 
will  finally  establish  itself  by  mere  vociferation.  All 
must  die  out  in  noise,  except  the  one  or  two  that 
shall  prove  strong  enough  and  wise  enough  to  take 
men  calmly  by  the  hand,  and  lead  them  down  to  the 
foundations  that  they  rest  on,  and  say,  "  Look  for 
yourselves,"  and  so  finally  convince  men's  minds  as 
well  as  deafen  their  bewildered  ears. 

And  now  I  want  to  apply  what  I  have  been  saying 
to  Christianity  more  distinctly.  I  think  it  is  a  ques- 
tion that  many  Christians  are  not  wholly  clear  about. 
Are  there  any  clear  reasons,  capable  of  statement  to 
other  people,  why  we  are  Christians  ?  There  are 
people  who  know  that  they  are  Christians,  and  always 
mean  to  be.  But  does  our  religion  stand  frankly  be- 
fore the  world  and  say  to  the  doubter,  "  Come  and 
see  ; "  and  having  something  really  to  point  to  which 
can  convince  his  reason  and  change  his  heart?  Has 
she  got  just  to  stand,  with  her  creed  in  her  hand,  say- 
ing, "  Believe  this  or  die,"  threatening  the  penalties 
of  unbelief ;  or  can  she  do  what  any  honest  man  would 
like  to  do,  —  call  other  men  to  see  what  she  sees,  and 
so  believe  her  belief,  not  because  they  will  suffer  if 
they  refuse,  but  because  they  cannot  help  it.  I 
believe,  indeed,  that  no  man  ever  loses  any  truth, 
whether  through  his  own  fault  or  not,  without  suffer- 
ing for  it.  It  may  not  be  in  the  way  of  punishment, 
but  he  suffers.  If  every  truth  gained  makes  a  man 
richer,  any  truth  lost  must  make  him  poorer.     I  be- 


COME   AND    SEE.  143 

lieve  that  the  fear  of  such  suffering  for  disbelief  may- 
be rightly  used  to  break  up  men's  sluggishness,  and 
compel  them  to  inquire ;  but  that  is  a  different  thing 
from  attempting  to  compel  belief  by  fear.  Philip 
may  say  to  Nathanael,  "  You  will  suffer  if  you  do  not 
beheve  in  my  Messiah ;  therefore,  '  Come  and  see ; '  " 
but  he  cannot  say,  "  You  will  suffer  if  you  do  not 
believe ;  therefore  believe  without  seeing."  It  is  a 
perfectly  simple  distinction,  but  one  that  men  are 
always  forgetting.  Fear  can  induce  inquiry,  but 
cannot  create  belief.  In  a  frivolous  age,  before  friv- 
olous minds,  one  may  well  stand  and  portray  the  ter- 
rible effects  of  rejecting  truth.  But  when  the  age  is 
serious,  and  when  the  minds  to  which  he  speaks  have 
lost  their  frivolity  and  really  are  in  earnest,  then  he 
must  be  ready  to  throw  aside  his  terrors  and  to  lead 
them  to  the  reasons  of  the  faith  he  thinks  they  ought 
to  hold.  Can  our  faith  thus  utter  her  invitation? 
Men  almost  fancy  to-day  that  she  cannot;  that  she 
must  hide  herself  behind  vague  terrors.  If  that  were 
so,  not  merely  we  could  not  make  other  men  believe, 
but  we  could  not  believe  ourselves.  Let  us  see  what 
the  invitation  is  that  Christianity  gives  to  earnest 
men  really  looking  for  the  truth. 

1.  It  is  the  Bible  first  that  she  is  holding  as  she 
stands  there  saying,  "  Come  and  see."  The  Bible 
as  the  word  of  God  —  as  the  true  story  of  His  deal- 
ings with  the  world.  Christianity  holds  that  out 
and  frankly  bids  men  come  and  examine  it  for  them- 
selves. She  cannot  escape  that,  and  she  does  not 
want  to.  The  Bible  as  a  book  of  history  and  teach- 
ing, to  be  examined  like  other  books,  first  as  to  its 


144  COME  AND  SEE. 

truth  and  authority,  then  as  to  its  meaning,  this 
must  always  be  the  first  principle  of  a  reasonable 
Christianity.  That  in  the  four  Gospels  we  have  the 
story  told  by  His  own  contemporaries  and  disciples 
of  how  Jesus  the  Saviour  lived  and  taught,  and  died ; 
that  is  the  truth  which  Christianity  lays  first  before 
men's  eyes.  She  calls  them  to  examine  for  them- 
selves whether  the  book  from  which  the  warrant  of 
her  life  proceeds  is  genuine  and  true.  Men  come  to 
it,  and  by  every  trial  they  can  make  of  it,  of  critical 
study  or  of  spiritual  experience,  they  test  this  spring 
out  of  which  the  whole  stream  flows. 

2.  And  then,  secondly,  Christianity  offers  to  the 
world  her  historic  Christ.  Again  she  says,  "  Come 
and  see."  Back  in  the  centuries,  yet  set  so  clearly 
in  the  light  of  authentic  history  that  all  attempts  to 
melt  His  life  into  a  cloudy  myth  have  always  failed, 
there  stands  this  figure.  She  claims  that  this  Being 
to  whom  she  j)oints  is  the  power  and  wisdom  of  God 
present  upon  the  earth.  You  hesitate  and  doubt. 
Then  "Come  and  see,"  she  says.  Put  yourself  in 
the  presence  of  this  Being.  See  how  He  lives.  He 
is  a  man  surely.  In  suffering  and  joy  alike,  the 
identifying  proof-marks  of  our  humanity  are  all 
here.  But  ennoble  humanity  as  completely  as  you 
will,  and  it  will  not  explain  this  phenomenal  charac- 
ter and  life.  There  is  a  simplicity,  a  largeness  of 
purpose,  which  is  divine.  Explain  this  phenomenon 
of  human  history,  how  can  you?  She  says  it  is 
God  manifest  in  the  flesh.  Come  and  find  another 
explanation,  if  you  can.     Come,  and  if  there  is  no 


COME  AND   SEE.  145 

other  to  be  found,  take  this  and  own  the  divine 
Christ. 

3.  And  thirdly,  Christianity  calls  us  to  see  her 
Christian  history.  She  claims  that  the  Christ,  for- 
ever present  in  human  life,  is  a  renewing  and  com- 
forting and  strengthening  power  everywhere.  You 
doubt  and  hesitate.  Again,  frank  as  Philip,  she 
cries,  "  Come  and  see."  Then  the  great  books  are 
opened;  the  birth  and  growth  of  modern  history 
is  shown ;  the  larger  reign  of  conscience ;  the 
gradual  advance  of  freedom ;  the  ever-moving 
spiritual  element  in  life ;  the  refreshed,  invigorated 
world  of  modern  times.  Then  here  and  there  a 
veil  more  sacred  is  lifted  from  the  hearts  of  single 
men.  The  record  of  the  saints  is  shown,  —  men, 
women,  little  children,  borne  up  over  their  sorrows 
so  that  their  voices  ring  still  to  us  out  of  the  fires 
where  they  burned,  —  made  giants  in  their  weakness, 
to  do  the  work  of  God  so  that  the  hard  world  still 
bears  the  pressures  where  their  feeble  fingers  laid 
hold  of  it,  as  if  it  had  been  seized  with  some  grasp 
of  iron.  These  are  the  phenomena.  Come  and  see 
them !  Come  and  see  them !  Other  religions  can 
show  you  some  of  the  same  sort,  no  doubt.  We 
rejoice  to  recognize  the  proof  that  in  them  too  the 
divine  Spirit  has  been  at  work.  When  the  faith  of 
Christ  shows  her  marks  of  the  divine  Power,  let 
our  voices  gladly  rejoice  to  acknowledge  the  divine 
Presence. 

The  Bible,  the  historic  Christ,  the  Christian  history, 
—  these,  then,  are  what  the  religion  we  believe  in  lays 
before  men  who  are  really  willing  to  come  and  see 


146  COME  AND  SEE. 

whether  what  she  claims  is  true  or  not.  But  is  this 
all?  Is  there  not  another  region  of  evidence  from 
which  the  Christian  draws  his  deepest  assurance,  but 
which  seems  less  open  to  him  who  is  looking  at  the 
faith  from  its  outside.  I  mean  the  region  of  per- 
sonal experience.  Christ  says  to  the  Christian,  "  I 
can  bless  you  with  spiritual  blessings,  with  a  loving, 
happy  inner  life."  "Yes,"  the  glad  soul  answers, 
recalling  many  a  bright  passage  in  its  own  career. 
"Yes,  surely,  Christ  can  do,  will  do,  has  done  all  that 
He  says."  And  so  it  gladly  looks  forward  and  trusts 
Him  for  the  things  to  come.  But,  then,  when  that 
soul  turns  to  another  by  its  side,  and  tells  of  the 
richer  life,  the  trust,  the  hope,  the  peace,  the  courage, 
the  gradual  purity  Avhich  the  Saviour  can  give,  and 
that  stranger  soul,  weary  of  a  search  for  these  high 
things  in  which  it  never  has  succeeded,  looks  in- 
credulous and  hopeless,  can  you  say  to  it  simply, 
"  Come  and  see,"  tempting  it  to  an  experience  which 
lies  wide  open  to  any  one,  like  these  others  I  de- 
scribed? "How  can  I?"  it  replies.  "To  try  these 
things  implies  already  a  sympathetic  appreciation  of 
them,  which  is  the  very  faith  I  lack  and  cannot 
find."  We  stand  apart.  "  I  say  I  cannot  believe,  and 
your  only  answer  is.  Come  and  believe."  This  is 
the  real  difficulty  that  many  people  feel  when  they 
are  asked  to  test  the  reality  to  its  spiritual  power 
by  making  themselves  subjects  of  it.  Their  an- 
swer, often  not  captious,  but  very  sad,  is  that  they 
cannot  make  themselves  subjects  of  it  until  they 
do  believe  in  it.  And  so  the  weary  circle  runs 
around. 


COME   AND   SEE.  147 

Is  it  a  hopeless  difficulty  ?  Some  people  seriously 
believe  that  it  is.  They  hold  that  the  whole  Chris- 
tian experience  is  so  foreign  and  so  unintelligible  to 
a  soul  that  God  has  not  called,  that  it  is  utterly  un- 
approachable and  unattractive  to  that  soul,  and  they 
fix  the  calling  of  God  at  one  definite  recognizable 
point  in  a  man's  life.  Until  that  moment  comes,  it 
is  as  impossible  for  that  man  to  make  his  way  into 
the  charmed  circle  in  which  they  live  who  live  with 
God,  as  for  Lucifer  to  gather  up  his  own  shattered 
strength  and  holiness,  and  go  and  stand  again  beside 
Gabriel  and  Michael  before  the  throne  of  God.  To 
invite  the  soul  to  such  an  experience  is  to  invite  to  an 
impossibility  —  it  is  calling  upon  a  corpse  to  live. 
There  is  nothing  for  it  to  do  but  to  lie  helpless  and 
wait.  The  father  may  tell  his  child  of  the  joy  of  the 
Christian,  but  the  child  cannot  rise  up  and  say,  "  I 
will  go."  Friend  may  cry  to  friend  out  of  the  full- 
ness of  his  heart,  "  Oh,  taste  and  see  that  the  Lord  is 
good ! "  but  he  is  tempting  only  to  a  Tantalus  feast. 
This  test  of  Christianity  which  lies  in  the  personal 
Christian  experience  can  be  nothing  to  you  till  first 
you  are  a  Christian. 

I  cannot  think  that  this  is  true.  It  does  not 
sound  to  me  like  the  New  Testament.  It  does  not 
sound  to  me  like  Christ.  And  its  fault  seems  to 
me  to  be  in  this  assumption,  that  there  is  one  fixed 
moment  in  a  man's  life  when  the  spirit  of  God  comes 
to  him  for  the  first  time  —  that  before  that  moment 
he  is  an  outsider,  a  foreigner,  and  an  alien.  If  our 
first  view  is  different  —  if  we  believe  that  all  men 
are    God's  children,  and  that  each   of   the  children 


148  COME  AND   SEE. 

from  his  birth  into  this  world,  and  how  long  before 
we  cannot  say,  is  on  the  Father's  heart  and  mind ; 
if  we  believe  that  every  truth  and  goodness  that 
the  most  benighted  soul  finds  comes  to  liim  from  the 
one  only  source  of  truth  and  goodness  which  the 
universe  contains  (and  in  order  not  to  deny  that, 
men  have  been  compelled  to  deny  that  much  which 
was  evidently  truth  and  goodness  was  either  true  or 
good} ;  if  the  hour  of  conversion  is  the  time  when 
the  soul  comes  to  God,  and  not  the  time  when  God 
comes  to  the  soul,  that  having  happened  so  long 
before;  if  all  this  different  idea  be  true,  then  the 
difficulty  is  not  so  great.  I  go  to  my  friend  and  bid 
him  test  Christ  by  this  experience  of  the  inner  life, 
and  he  answers  me  as  I  described,  "  I  cannot  come 
to  Him  till  first  He  comes  to  me."  The  answer  is,  "  He 
has  come  to  you.  All  the  truth  and  goodness  that 
you  have  He  brought  you.  Your  coming  to  Him  will 
be  only  coming  into  a  consciousness,  and  so  a  com- 
plete service  of  the  Saviour  who  was  already  with 
you."  When  I  invite  you,  then,  to  the  religious  ex- 
perience, I  invite  you  not  to  something  strange,  but  to 
something  which  in  its  rudiments  you  know  already. 
You  have  already  seen  the  opening  of  the  paths  that 
lead  to  Christ.  You  cannot  see  the  depths  they  lead 
to,  but  they  do  lead  finally  to  Him.  When  I  urge 
you  to  come  to  Him,  I  am  urging  you  to  follow  those 
paths  out  to  the  end.  You  cannot  see  their  whole 
course,  but  jou  can  see  one  step  at  least  farther  than 
you  have  done  yet,  and  so  test  the  steps  beyond,  so 
come  nearer  to  the  illumination  and  assurance  that 
awaits  you  at  the  end. 


COME   AND   SEE.  149 

I  am  sure  that  this  is  true :  that  when  I  take 
a  man  who  says  that  he  knows  nothing  of  Christ, 
and  yet  who  owns  that  he  has  instincts  of  duty 
and  aspirations  of  reverence  to  God,  and  a  long- 
ing for  purity,  that  I  believe  were  put  into  his  heart 
by  no  other  than  Christ's  Holy  Spirit,  and  when  I 
urge  and  beg  that  man  to  do  the  duty  and  to  be- 
lieve the  truth  which  he  has  had  made  known  to 
him,  I  am  leading  toward  that  Christ  who  is  the  cen- 
tre of  all  duty  and  all  truth.  If  I  found  a  man  who 
believed  in  a  God,  but  not  in  any  self-manifestation 
of  that  God  in  human  life,  what  would  I  do  ?  I 
would  do  all  that  I  could  to  make  that  God  whom  he 
did  believe  in  more  and  more  real  to  him.  I  would 
waken  his  conscience  till  it  cried  out  with  the  sense 
of  disobedience.  He  should  see  that  God  awful  in 
His  righteousness,  more  awful  in  His  love,  close  to 
his  daily  life.  New  needs  should  start  out  of  his  deep- 
ening religion,  until  only  an  Emmanuel,  a  fatherhood 
made  manifest  in  brotherhood,  a  God  in  Christ,  could 
satisfy  him.  So  I  would  try  to  get  him  to  "  come  and 
see  "  Christ,  where  He  is  most  mighty,  —  in  His  work 
in  the  soul  of  man.  Only  when  I  found  a  man  who 
owned  no  duty  which  was  yet  undone,  before  whom 
there  opened  no  vista  of  spiritual  aspiration  that  was 
yet  unf ollowed,  —  only  when  I  found  the  man  per- 
fectly bounded  and  contented  with  this  earthly  life, 
should  I  feel  that  I  had  found  one  before  whom  there 
opened  no  way  to  the  Saviour  of  us  all. 

This  seems  to  be  reasonable,  surely.  If  you  knew 
that  the  benefactor  of  your  life  was  living  now  in 
Europe,  though  you  did  not  know  just  where  or  how 


150  COME  AND   SEE. 

to  reach  him,  or  what  he  would  do  for  you,  or  even 
thoroughly  and  certainly  who  he  was  and  what  he 
was,  only  that  he  was  and  that  he  was  there,  you 
would  go  to  Europe  and  live  there  yourself,  if  you 
had  any  way  of  getting  there,  that  you  might  be  in 
the  same  land  with  him  and  certainly  somewhere 
near  him.  If  a  soul  has  many  doubts  and  bewilder- 
ments about  Christ,  and  yet  knows  that  there  is  a 
Saviour,  and  that  that  Saviour's  home  is  in  the  land 
of  righteousness  and  truth,  then  to  that  land  of 
righteousness  and  truth  that  soul  will  go  by  any  road 
that  it  can  find,  eager  to  get  there,  seeking  a  road, 
pressing  through  difficulties,  that  it  may  be  in  the 
same  country  with,  and  somewhere  near,  its  unfound 
Lord.  It  may  be  that  the  clouds  that  for  us  mortals 
haunt  that  land  of  righteousness  and  truth  may  long 
hang  so  thick  and  low  that  living  close  to  Him  the 
soul  may  still  fail  to  see  Him,  but  some  day  certainly 
the  fog  shall  rise,  the  cloud  shall  scatter,  and  in  the 
perfect  enlightenment  of  the  other  life  the  soul  shall 
see  its  Lord,  and  be  thankful  for  every  darkest  step 
that  it  took  towards  Him  here. 

And  is  this  what  it  means,  then,  that  "  Coming  to 
Jesus  "  ?  That  phrase  that  is  so  old,  so  vague,  what- 
ever it  means,  means  for  you,  first  of  all,  just  this 
doing  the  duty  which  lies  next  to  you,  and  following 
out  whatever  spiritual  conviction  you  have  to  its 
next  result,  being  true  to  the  light  you  have,  and 
waiting,  hoping,  praying  for  more.  Yes,  simply,  just 
exactly  that.  If  you  have  any  duty  that  you  know 
you  ought  to  do,  and  are  cowardly  and  dishonest 
about  and  will  not  do  it,  then  to  go  and  do   it,   if 


COME   AND   SEE.  151 

you  have  any  spiritual  aspiration  that  you  are  keep- 
ing down  under  a  weight  of  business  and  selfishness, 
then  to  set  it  free,  that  is  what  it  means  for  you 
now  to  come  to  Christ.  It  may  be  that  Nathanael's 
first  step  when  he  started  with  Philip  was  into  the 
dark  shadow  of  some  Capernaum  alley  or  up  the 
steep  rocky  path  that  led  from  town  to  town.  After- 
ward Christ  clothed  in  light  upon  the  lake  at  mid- 
night, Christ  at  the  table  in  the  chamber  of  the 
supper,  Christ  in  the  room  where  the  disciples  were 
assembled  after  the  resurrection  when  the  door  was 
shut.  And  so  for  you  hereafter,  Christ  in  the  high- 
est experiences,  the  purest  raptures  of  this  life  and 
the  other,  Christ  in  forgiveness,  in  communion,  in 
fellowship  of  work,  in  fellowship  of  glory ;  but  now 
Christ  in  these  first  steps  that  lead  you  towards  Him, 
in  the  truthfulness  and  purity  and  unselfishness  and 
humility,  in  the  struggle  to  do  right,  and  the  sorrow 
when  you  have  done  wrong,  which  are  possible  for 
you  right  away. 

I  am  well  pleased  that  our  long  journey  of  this 
evening  has  brought  us  out  at  last  upon  this  clear 
and  open  ground  of  immediate  duty,  —  the  duty  for 
to-morrow,  the  duty  for  to-day.  You  are  in  doubt  of 
Christ.  "  How  can  He  be  this  that  you  claim  ?  How 
can  He  be,  indeed,  at  all  ?  "  The  answer  is,  ''  Come 
and  see."  You  say,  "  I  cannot."  Say  it  sadly  or 
bitterly,  "  I  cannot."  I  do  not  know  what  your  im- 
possibility may  be,  but  I  am  sure  of  one  absolute 
impossibility  that  may  be  yours.  You  cannot  see  the 
highest  and  the  best  so  long  as  you  are  neglecting  a 
known  duty  or  stifling  a  known  truth.     I  am  well 


152  CORIE  AND   SEE. 

pleased  to  leave  it  here.  Go  home  and  search  your 
heart.  Let  it  speak  out.  Be  brave  and  honest.  Take 
up  your  wronged  duties  and  do  them.  Take  up  your 
wronged  truths  and  really  believe  them.  Enter  into 
that  region  of  sincerity  and  faithfulness  where  Christ 
abides,  and  then  surely  some  day  you  will  find  Him 
there.  Then  not  merely  the  lowest  but  the  highest 
evidences  of  our  faith  shall  become  clear  to  you,  even 
that  highest  of  all  its  evidences,  the  Spirit  itself 
bearing  with  your  spirit  that  you  are  the  child  of 
God  and  joint  heir  with  Christ. 


IX. 

THE  PRINCIPLE   OF  THE   CRUST. 

"  Let  no  man  deceive  himself.  If  any  man  thinketh  that  he  is 
wise  among  you  in  this  world,  let  him  become  a  fool,  that  he  may  be 
wise."  —  I.  Cor.  iii.  18. 

Theee  must  have  been  plenty  of  people  in  Cor- 
inth to  whom  these  words  came  home.  The  conceit 
of  Greece  was  wisdom,  and  Corinth  was  one  of  the 
eyes  of  Greece.  There  were  the  scholars  of  the 
schools.  There,  in  that  bright  transparent  air,  every- 
thing quivering  and  blazing  in  the  sunshine,  the 
passion  of  knowing  was  the  great  dominant  emotion ; 
the  pride  of  knowing  was  the  complacent  satisfaction 
of  men's  lives. 

And  there  is  no  satisfaction  so  subtle  and  insidi- 
ous as  the  conceit  of  knowledge  —  no  other  posses- 
sion so  becomes  a  very  part  of  the  possessor.  The 
money  which  you  hold  in  your  hand,  the  laurel 
which  men  wreathe  around  your  brow,  both  of  these 
may  disappear  and  you  are  still  the  same,  but  the 
thing  you  know  is  part  of  you.  No  man  can  take  it 
from  you.  Its  subtle  essence  is  in  your  heart  and 
character.  You  are  something  different  because  of 
it.  And  so,  as  a  man  loves  what  he  is  more  than 
what  he  has,  self-love  lends  all  its  intensity  to  the 
pride  of  learning,  and  no  man  is  so  proud  as  he  who 
"  thinketh  that  he  is  wise  "  among  men  in  the  world. 


154  THE   PELNCIPLE  OF   THE  CRUST. 

To  such  men  writes  St.  Paul.  St.  Paul,  himself 
the  wise  man,  the  lover  of  wisdom,  and  he  says  that 
there  come  times  when  the  great  need  of  life  is  to 
put  aside  what  seems  our  wisdom,  to  give  it  no  value, 
to  make  no  account  of  it,  to  seem  to  ourselves  to 
know  nothing,  and  in  his  strong  words,  to  "  become 
a  fool,"  and  this  with  the  distinct  purpose  that  we 
may  really  get  the  wisdom  which  we  have  thought 
ourselves  to  possess.  Surely  there  is  enough  of 
strangeness  in  such  exhortation  to  excite  our  curi- 
osity, and  set  us  to  studying  to  see  what  the  great 
apostle,  who  always  means  something  weighty  and 
timely  and  interesting,  means  here. 

And  at  the  very  outset  we  cannot  help  feeling  how 
his  words  have  the  same  tone  with  which  a  good 
many  other  words  in  the  New  Testament,  and  es- 
pecially in  the  Gospels,  make  us  familiar.  We  think 
about  those  words  of  Jesus  when  He  said,  "  Whoso- 
ever loseth  his  life  shall  save  it;  "  or  those  other 
words  to  the  young  rich  man,  "  Go  and  sell  all  that 
thou  hast ;  "  or  yet  those  others,  "  Except  3-e  be  con- 
verted and  become  as  little  children."  And  of  a  gen- 
eral spirit  which  runs  through  all  His  teaching,  that 
very  much  which  the  world  has  been  elaborately 
building  up  must  be  pulled  down,  before  the  true 
city  of  God,  the  new  Jerusalem,  can  be  established 
in  the  earth.  No  one  can  read  the  New  Testament 
and  not  catch  that  spirit,  and  whoever  catches  it, 
sees  the  far-off  hope  of  a  perfected  humanity  only 
through  falling  systems  and  the  ruin  of  the  vicious 
and  imperfect  conditions  which  must  take  place  first. 
Whoever  has   thoroughly  accepted  and  been  filled 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   THE   CEUST.  165 

with  that  spirit,  is  ready  to  feel  how  like  it  is  to  what 
Paul  teaches  in  this  text,  and  that  the  man  who 
calls  himself  wise  must  become  a  fool  to  gain  true 
wisdom. 

It  is  no  mere  abuse  of  earthly  wisdom,  such  as 
religious  teachers  sometimes  have  allowed  themselves. 
It  goes  more  deep.  It  comes  more  down  to  funda- 
mental principles  than  that.  Let  me  try  to  state  the 
principle  which  seems  to  me  to  be  involved  in  it. 
If  I  gave  it  a  name  I  should  almost  venture  to  call 
it  the  Principle  of  the  Crust.  What  I  mean  is 
this:  There  are  two  sorts  of  hindrance  or  obstacle 
which  may  settle  around  any  object  and  prevent  a 
power  from  outside  from  reaching  it.  One  of  them 
is  a  purely  external  obstacle,  built  round  it  like  a 
wall,  of  stuff  and  nature  different  from  the  object 
itself.  The  other  is  simply  its  own  substance,  hard- 
ened upon  the  surface  and  shutting  up  the  body  of  the 
object,  as  it  were,  behind  and  within  itself.  This 
latter  is  the  Crust.  The  river  freezes,  and  it  is  the 
river's  self,  grown  hard  and  stiff,  which  shuts  the 
river's  water  out  from  the  sunshine  and  the  rain. 
The  ground  is  trodden  hard,  and  it  is  the  very  sub- 
stance of  the  ground  that  lies  rigid  and  impenetrable 
and  catches  the  seed,  and  will  not  let  it  enter  in  and 
claim  the  soil  and  do  its  fruitful  work.  The  loaf 
hardens  its  surface,  and  the  Crust  which  confines  the 
bread  is  bread  itself.  This  is  the  notion  of  the  Crust. 
It  is  of  the  very  substance  of  the  thing  which  it  im- 
prisons. It  is  not  a  foreign  material ;  but  the  thing 
itself,  grown  hard  and  rigid,  shuts  the  soft  and  tender 
and  receptive  portions  of  the  thing  away.     The  in- 


156  THE  PRINCIPLE   OF   THE  CRUST. 

fluences  from  outside  are  powerless  to  reach  it.  Not 
until  the  Crust  is  broken,  and  the  ice  melts  once 
more  into  the  stream,  and  the  hardened  ground  is 
crumbled  into  the  general  system  of  the  soil  again. 
Not  until  then  can  power  and  influence  easily  find 
their  way  in  and  permeate  the  whole. 

Is  not  the  parable  plain  ?  Can  we  not  recognize 
how  that  which  takes  place  in  the  lake  or  on  the 
road-side  takes  place  also  in  the  ordinary  intellectual 
and  moral  life  of  man.  Out  of  the  very  substance 
of  a  man's  life,  out  of  the  very  stuff  of  what  he  is 
and  does,  comes  the  hindrance  which  binds  itself 
about  his  being,  and  will  not  let  the  better  influences 
out.  His  occupations,  his  acquirements,  his  habits, 
his  standards  of  action  and  of  thoughts,  make  Crusts 
out  of  their  own  material,  so  that,  beside  whatever 
foreign  barrier  may  stand  between  them  and  the 
higher  food  they  need,  there  is  this  barrier  which 
they  have  made  out  of  themselves.  That  self-made 
barrier  must  be  broken  up,  must  be  restored  to  its 
first  condition  and  become  again  part  of  the  sub- 
stanoe  out  of  which  it  was  evolved,  before  the  life  can 
be  fed  with  the  dews  of  first  principles  and  the  rain 
of  the  immediate  descent  of  God. 

Let  us  see  what  all  this  means  in  special  illus- 
trations. What  is  it  that  we  mean  by  Prejudice? 
Simply  the  premature  hardening  of  opinion.  A  man 
is  thinking  and  studying,  seeking  after  truth.  He 
is  open  to  all  light  and  influence.  He  is  ready  to 
be  taught  on  every  side.  Knowledge  is  welcome 
whencesoever  it  may  come.  The  surface  of  his  life  is 
free.      But  suddenly  or  gradually  the   man  stops. 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   THE   CECTST.  157 

As  if  a  cold  wind  touched  the  stream  and  froze  it, 
the  water  turns  itself  into  a  wall  of  ice.  The  degree 
of  thought  and  truth  which  has  been  reached  be- 
comes a  stopping-place.  It  is  no  longer  a  promise 
and  prophecy  of  more  beyond.  It  is  an  end  —  hard, 
stiff,  impenetrable,  nothing  can  break  through  it. 
What  is  it  but  a  Crust?  It  is  itself  made  of  the 
thought  which  it  imprisons.  It  is  the  toughened 
surface  of  the  student's  study,  making  it  impossible 
for  any  further  light  to  enter  in  and  play  upon  the 
thought  imprisoned  in  itself. 

This  is  the  essence  of  all  prejudice  :  my  tyrant 
says  to  me,  "  You  shall  not  learn,"  and  shuts  me  up 
behind  a  wall  of  brass  or  iron.  My  own  nature  says 
to  me,  "  You  shall  not  learn,"  and  throws  out  its  ar- 
mor of  prejudice,  made  of  its  own  crude  conceptions 
and  half-mastered  learning,  and  within  that  I  am  as 
helpless  as  behind  the  iron  or  the  brass.  Those  crude 
conceptions  must  be  broken  up  and  turned  again 
into  good  truth-learning  capability  before  I  can  once 
more  lie  open  to  the  light. 

Another  kind  of  crust  is  formalism.  Truth  utters 
itself  in  outward  symbols.  Belief  and  resolution 
declare  themselves  in  forms.  It  is  the  natural  law  of 
expression,  and  so  long  as  the  form  remains  soft  and 
pliant,  full  of  the  spirit  of  the  belief  or  resolution  it 
expresses,  all  is  right.  Form  and  belief  are  like 
body  and  soul  to  one  another.  But  when  form 
hardens  into  formalism,  when  the  real  substance  of 
belief,  instead  of  remaining  soft  and  pliant,  grows 
stiff,  and  will  not  let  belief  grow  and  enlarge,  will 
not  let  the  food  of  belief  which  is  new  truth  come 


158  THE   PRINCIPLE   OP   THE   CRUST. 

pouring  in,  then  you  have  got  the  most  crusted  and 
impenetrable  armor  that  can  be  imagined.  Forms 
ought  to  be  the  medium  through  which  truth  comes 
to  the  inner  nature,  as  the  surface  ground  furnishes 
the  channels  through  which  the  warm  sunshine 
reaches  the  deeper  soil.  When  forms  do  not  do  that, 
but  shut  truth  out,  and  make  the  inner  nature  starve 
on  the  stale  remnant  of  what  it  already  has,  keeping 
no  free  and  open  communication  with  the  perpetual 
source,  then  forms  have  hardened  into  formalism. 
Beware  of  formalism,  —  not  by  discarding  forms,  but 
by  keeping  them  soft,  by  refusing  to  let  them  grow 
hard ;  and  that  can  only  be  by  keeping  them  in  true 
connection  with  the  faiths  which  they  express. 
When  they  cease  to  express  faith,  break  them  up, 
return  them  to  the  ground  again,  and  ask  God  to 
feed  you  directly  with  the  ministrations  of  His 
truth. 

What  is  a  great  reformation,  a  great  fresh  start 
and  new  departure  in  the  world's  religion,  but  just 
the  breaking  up  of  a  formalism  which  has  become  a 
crust  ?  The  ways  of  the  church  have  grown  hard. 
They  are  imprisoning,  instead  of  cultivating  or 
expressing,  the  church's  life.  A  great  explosion 
comes.  The  traditions  and  habits  are  all  broken  to 
pieces.  The  fragments  of  the  crust  are  swallowed 
up  and  stirred  in,  and  become  again  part  of  the 
mass  of  true  faith  and  healthy  feeling,  which  lies 
once  more  open  without  hindrance  to  the  sunlight 
of  God.  That  is  what  took  place  in  Luther's  day. 
That  is  what,  in  many  ways,  is  taking  place  in 
ours. 


THE  PRINCIPLE   OP  THE  CRUST.  15[! 

Another  sort  of  crust  is  the  conceit  of  knowing 
the  world.  Have  you  not  all  known  men  who, 
sooner  or  later,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they 
knew  mankind?  They  found  some  stiff,  tight, 
narrow  conception  of  what  human  life  amounted 
to.  It  was  sceptical  of  any  good.  It  was  cynical 
and  bitter.  It  disparaged  the  good  in  man  which  it 
could  not  deny.  It  was  largely  the  echo  of  the 
man's  own  selfhood ;  the  image  of  his  own  nature, 
accepted  as  the  type  and  picture  of  universal  hu- 
manity. However  it  was  formed,  there  it  stood,  this 
man's  knowledge  of  man.  And  he  was  very  proud 
of  it.  He  thought  it  was  a  miracle  of  insight.  It 
stood  to  him  as  the  result  of  wonderful  observation. 
He  went  about  the  world  reading  his  fellow-creatures 
by  this  key  which  he  applied  indiscriminately  and 
stupidly  to  them  all.  And  what  was  the  result? 
Was  that  man  ready  or  able  to  see  and  own  a  new, 
fresh,  singular  specimen  of  manhood  when  it  ap- 
peared? Could  the  mystery  of  human  life,  its 
pathos,  its  wonderful  variety,  its  suggestion  of  un- 
developed power,  get  any  chance  of  play  upon  his 
imprisoned  perception?  Surely  not.  There  is  no 
blinder  bat  in  all  the  heavens  than  this  conceited 
man  of  the  world  who  goes  about  saying,  "  Oh,  I 
know  man ! "  and  is  perfectly  incapable  of  forming 
just  judgments,  or  seeing  the  finest  shades  and  dis- 
tinctions of  men  and  women.  His  crust  must  be 
broken  up.  His  crude  conceit  must  be  dispelled. 
Some  experience  must  teach  him  how  much  richer 
is  the  nature  of  man,  how  much  harder  to  know  than 
he  has  guessed.     Then,  perhaps,  when  he  had  ceased 


160  the;  principle  of  the  ckust. 

saying,   "You  can't   teach  me   anything,"   he   may 
begin  to  learn. 

Out  of  all  these  instances  does  there  not  issue  to 
our  sight  a  truth  or  principle  which  we  recognize  at 
once?  It  is  that  all  life  tends  to  encrust  itself,  to 
imprison  itself  within  itself,  and  that  its  crust  needs 
to  be  constantly  broken  and  returned  into  the  gen- 
eral mass  out  of  which  it  was  formed,  in  order  that 
the  best  influences  may  be  received.  Ever  there 
must  be  a  return  to  a  primitive  simplicity,  to  a  con- 
dition of  first  principles,  in  which  the  power  to 
receive  may  be  freshened  and  renewed.  Do  you 
not  recognize  that?  It  is  part  of  the  old  craving  to 
begin  the  game  of  life  again.  It  is  not  that  life  has 
been  miserable,  or  has  wholly  failed,  but  it  has  lost 
simplicity.  We  long  for  that  openness  in  which  all 
things  seem  possible.  A  greater  and  greater  num- 
ber of  things  seem  to  have  become  impossible.  "I 
shall  never  do  this ;  I  shall  never  do  that,"  we  have 
come  to  say  of  one  thing  after  another,  till  the  things 
which  there  is  any  chance  of  our  doing  seem  to  have 
become  very  few  indeed.  Then  youth,  with  its  un- 
limited possibilities,  seems  bright  to  you,  as  it  never 
did  when  you  j)ossessed  it.  You  cry  out  hopelessly 
for  its  return : 

• 
"  Make  me  feel  the  wild  pulsation  that  I  felt  before  the  strife, 
When  I  heard  my  days  before  me  and  the  tumult  of  my  life." 

The  same  is  felt  about  some  special  department  of 
life,  or  some  special  kind  of  knowledge.  Have  not 
you  men  in  your  professions  often  thought  whether 
you  would  not  gladly  give  up  all  the  knowledge  and 


THE  PRINCIPLK   OF   THE   CRUST.  161 

experience  which  you  have  gained,  precious  as  you 
know  it  is,  if  only  you  could  get  again  the  freshness 
and  eagerness  and  enthusiasm,  the  sense  of  how  much 
there  was  to  know,  and  of  what  a  capacity  there  was 
in  you  for  knowing  it,  which  filled  the  first  years  of 
your  life  in  your  vocation  ?  Have  not  you  readers  of 
the  Bible  sometimes  wished  that  you  could  rise  up 
some  morning  and  find  your  Bible  a  new  book,  fresh 
and  strange  toyou  as  if  you  had  never  seen  it  before  ? 
Have  you  not  almost  envied  the  heathen  to  whom 
the  story  of  Jesus  came  unstaled  by  countless  repe- 
titions, with  no  hardness  on  its  surface  from  the 
thoughts  and  theories  which  have  pressed  and 
handled  it  for  all  these  thousand  years  ? 

Oh  that  I  could  go  back  and  know  nothing,  with 
my  power  of  knowing  and  my  eagerness  to  know, 
set  free  from  under  the  weight  of  helpless  knowledge 
and  unused  experience  which  are  pressing  on  them 
now  I 

And,  now,  do  you  not  see  ?  Is  not  that  craving 
for  a  return  to  simplicity  just  what  St.  Paul  has  in 
his  mind  when  he  says  of  the  man  whom  he  wants 
to  see  made  wise,  "  Let  him  become  a  fool."  Is  it 
not  just  this  getting  rid  of  the  crust  of  life,  in  order 
that  life  itself  may  be  open  to  the  sunshine.  This  is 
what  he  means  by  his  strange  word  "  fool,"  I  think. 
It  may  have  some  reference  to  what  the  world  will 
think  of  him  who  accepts  the  Gospel  in  its  simpleness  ; 
but  more  than  that,  I  think  it  also  must  refer  to  that 
condition  of  simplicity  to  which  the  nature  must  re- 
turn before  Christ  with  all  His  great  enlightenment 
can  take  possession  of  it. 


162  THE   PRINCIPLE   OP   THE  CRUST. 

There  is  an  illustration  and  anticipation  of  this 
power  of  Christ  to  simplify  the  nature  and  break 
through  its  crusts,  in  the  way  in  which  all  great 
experiences  tend  to  do  the  same  thing,  which  Paul 
says  that  Christ  can  do.  Do  you  not  know  what  I 
mean  when  I  say,  that  under  all  strong  emotions, 
and  at  all  critical  instants,  men  who  have  seemed  to 
be  wise  among  other  men  in  the  world,  very  often 
"become  fools  that  they  may  be  wise?"  Look  at 
your  accomplished  man  —  which  means  your  finished 
man.  The  man  who  has  got  every  problem  solved 
and  every  question  answered ;  the  ends  of  life  all 
gathered  up  and  folded  in ;  the  surfaces  all  smooth 
and  hard  and  shining;  everything  neat  and  snug, 
and  trim  and  wise.  Suppose  some  great  calamity 
comes  upon  him  —  some  one  of  those  terrible  things 
which  tear  life  up  from  the  bottom  and  leave  no 
stone  or  timber  standing  where  it  stood.  What  is 
the  result  ?  How  the  old  settled  questions  burst  to 
life  again,  and  will  not  stay  imprisoned  under  what 
seemed  their  sufficient  answers.  The  adjustments 
are  thrown  all  out  of  gear.  The  ends  are  all  torn 
loose  and  sent  flying  out  upon  the  wind.  He  who 
seemed  to  himself  to  know  everything,  seems  to  him- 
self now  to  know  nothing.  The  wise  man  has  become 
a  fool. 

A  great  joy  sometimes  has  the  same  result.  I 
become  happy  beyond  my  highest  dream  of  happi- 
ness, and  what  then?  Again  my  theories  of  life 
give  way.  They  will  not  hold  this  overwhelming 
pleasure.  The  sails  are  torn  to  tatters  with  this 
tempest  of  joy.     I  dare  not  try  to  account  for  it. 


THE  PRINCIPLE   OF   THE   CRUST.  163 

I  take  it  in  a  dazzled  ignorance.  It  is  in  a  fool's 
hands  that  this  new  preciousness  of  life  is  tremu- 
lously held. 

And  yet  in  both  these  cases  this  foolishness  of  a 
great  experience  is  only  preliminary  to  and  makes 
possible  a  higher  wisdom.  Into  this  heart,  all  torn 
and  dismayed  with  sorrow,  pours  a  new  sense  of  the 
greatness  of  life  and  life's  relationships.  Into  this 
soul,  all  turbulent  with  joy,  there  comes  a  knowledge 
of  goodness  and  responsibility,  that  was  impossible 
before  the  great  disturbance  came.  You  needed 
larger  theories,  more  profound  and  spiritual  thoughts 
of  things,  than  those  which  you  had  lost.  You  must 
have  them.  And  lo !  they  came  to  you !  Lo  there 
they  were  ;  filling  the  depth  which  had  been  broken 
up.  Was  it  not  just  the  story  which  Paul  tells? 
You  had  seemed  to  be  wise.  You  became  a  fool. 
And  then  you  were  really  wise. 

And  yet,  to  come  back  to  our  crust  philosophy 
again.  That  which  had  shut  the  higher  wisdom  out 
of  your  soul  was  part  and  portion  of  the  soul  itself, 
and  so  when  it  was  broken  up  and  kneaded  in,  it 
became  part  of  the  substance  which  received  the  new 
illumination.  Do  you  see  what  I  mean  ?  Your  ex- 
perience proved  insufficient.  Your  life  had  to  open 
itself  again  in  primal  simplicity  to  God.  But  the 
life,  which  opened  itself,  had  the  experience  in  it  as 
an  element,  and  thi'ough  the  presence  of  that  ex- 
perience in  it,  it  was  more  fit  to  welcome  the  new 
wisdom.  The  new  simplicity  was  not  the  old. 
It  was  a  richer,  a  completer,  a  diviner  simplicity. 
It  was  the  man's  simplicity,  and  not  the   child's. 


164  THE   PEINCIPLE   OF   THE   CRUST. 

It  harmonized  all  the  results  of  experience  within 
itself.  Your  learning  was  not  able  to  account  for 
and  to  satisfy  your  life;  but  when  the  conceit  of 
learning  had  been  all  destroyed,  and  the  real  power 
of  knowing  thrown  open  to  the  highest  truth,  then 
the  discipline  of  the  old  thought  and  study  made 
that  power  of  knowing  a  richer  thing,  more  able  to 
receive  its  higher  gift  of  truth.  Nothing  is  lost. 
Conceit  paralyzes  even  the  highest  attainments  by 
making  them  inhuman.  But  humility  humanizes 
them  again  and  causes  them  to  be  receptive.  It  is 
the  story  which  Tennyson  has  told  so  wonderfully  in 
his  great  poem,  "The  Palace  of  Art."  The  spirit 
driven  out  from  the  home  which  its  selfishness  and 
vanity  have  built,  then  daring  to  hope  that  when  it 
shall  itself  have  grown  larger  and  truer  and  better 
it  may  come  back  and  find  its  palace  grown  large  to 
receive  it. 

"  Yet  tear  not  down  my  palace  towers,  that  are 
So  lightly,  beautifully  built; 
Perchance  I  may  return  with  others  there 
When  I  have  purged  my  guilt." 

It  is  the  wise  man  going  out  from  his  wisdom  into 
foolishness,  but  yet  believing  that  he  shall  some  day 
come  back  and  occupy  the  old  wisdom  in  a  nobler 
spirit. 

Thus  I  have  spoken  of  the  power  of  a  great  experi- 
ence to  turn  the  wise  man  into  the  fool  for  whom  the 
higher  wisdom  becomes  possible.  But  now,  to  come  to 
St.  Paul's  teaching,  the  greatest  of  all  experiences  is 
the  access  of  a  great  mastery.  Nothing  means  so  much 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   THE   CRUST.  165 

to  a  life  as  to  be  taken  into  the  power  of  another 
life,  and  lovingly  and  sympathetically  and  firmly 
ruled  by  it.  And  beyond  all  comparisons,  the  great- 
est of  all  such  masteries  is  Christ's.  That  which  is 
true,  then,  of  the  effect  of  all  great  experiences,  is 
truest  of  all  about  the  mastery  of  the  soul  by 
Christ,  of  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  life.  In- 
deed Christ  and  His  mastery  of  the  soul  seem  in 
some  strange  way  to  have  in  themselves  the  power 
of  all  great  experiences.  To  become  Christ's  servant 
does  for  us  that  which  all  great  emotions  and  occur- 
rences of  very  different  characters  can  do.  It  sobers 
us  like  sorrow.  It  exalts  us  like  joy.  It  calms  us 
like  satisfaction.  It  quickens  us  like  suspense.  It 
deepens  us  like  doubt.  It  irradiates  us  like  cer- 
tainty. It  warms  us  like  friendship.  It  disciplines 
us  like  authority.  It  restrains  us  like  fear.  It  in- 
spires us  like  hope.  It  touches  us  with  all  the  hands 
of  all  the  influences  which  our  nature  can  receive. 

If  this  is  true,  then  it  is  not  strange  that  the  power 
which,  we  saw,  belonged  to  all  great  experiences  should 
also  belong  supremely  to  the  mastery  of  the  soul  by 
Christ.  A  man  transfers  the  whole  thought  of  life 
to  Christ.  That  great,  that  mighty  alteration  comes. 
The  man  is  born  again.  New  principles,  new  stand- 
ards occupy  him.  The  life  which  he  now  lives  in 
the  flesh  he  lives  by  the  faith  of  the  Son  of  God. 
There  never  was  a  nobler  instance  of  it  all  than  St. 
Paul  who  wrote  those  words.  And  in  the  man's 
doing  of  that,  all  the  selfish  and  self-satisfied  con- 
ceptions of  life  go  to  pieces.  The  plans  which  the 
man  has  made  and  elaborated  and  provided  with  the 


166  THE   PRINCrPLB   OF   THE   CRUST. 

means  for  their  execution  no  longer  seem  to  be 
worthy  or  sufficient  ambitions  of  a  human  soul. 
The  higher,  holier,  manlier  ambitions  of  glorifying 
God  and  helping  brother-man  possess  the  life.  The 
purposes  of  life  grow  personal.  They  lose  their 
definiteness  and  trimness.  "  What  are  you  living 
for?"  you  ask  the  new  Christian  with  his  glowing 
face.  "Is  it  to  get  rich?"  — "Oh,  no!"  — "Is 
it  to  enjoy  yourself  ?  "  —  "  Oh,  no ! "  —  "  Is  it  to  make 
men  praise  you  and  get  fame  ?  "  —  "  Oh,  no."  —  "  Is 
it  to  heap  up  learning  ?  "  —  "  No."  —  "  What,  then  ?  " 
"  It  is  to  follow  Christ  and  do  His  will  and  grow  like 
Him  by  obedience."  What  a  bewilderment  that 
answer  brings  !  How  he  who  asked  the  question  can- 
not understand  it !  Has  the  man  then  "  become  a 
fool "  ?  Yes ;  in  the  higher  sense,  surely  he  has.  He 
has  found  all  the  ordinary  standards  of  life  insuffi- 
cient, and  cast  them  away.  He  has  gone  back  to  the 
elements  of  things.  He  has  thought  of  himself 
once  more,  not  as  the  millionaire,  not  as  the  scholar, 
not  as  the  politician,  but  as  the  man  —  Nicodemus, 
Matthew,  Pilate,  Paul,  these  are  the  men  in  the  New 
Testament  whom  Jesus  thus  dissolved  out  of  their 
artificialnesses,  and  brought  down  to  their  essential 
manhood.  Wonderful  was  His  power,  then  !  Won- 
derful is  the  power,  now  and  always,  with  which  He 
says  to  everybody  with  whom  He  comes  face  to  face, 
"  If  any  man  thinketh  that  he  is  wise  let  him  become 
a  fool." 

And  why  ?  For  what  ?  If  this  were  all  it  would 
be  most  bewildering.  Sometimes  it  has  been  made  to 
seem  as  if  it  were  all.     Sometimes  pious  men   have 


THE   PHINCIPLE   OF   THE   CRUST.  16T 

talked  as  if  the  breaking  up  of  worldly  wisdom  were 
everything,  as  if  a  sort  of  celestial  folly,  a  sanctified 
babyhood,  were  the  consummate  achievement  of  our 
Christianity.  Not  so  talks  Paul  :  "  Your  wise  man 
must  become  a  fool,"  he  says  ;  but  why  ?  "  That  he 
may  become  wise."  Behold  wisdom  is  the  end  of 
all !  No  less  in  the  Bible  and  in  the  church  than  in 
the  schools.  It  would  be  indeed  a  dreadful  world 
in  which  that  was  not  so.  A  dreadful  world 
in  which  ignorance  and  foolishness  should  be  the 
conditions  of  the  most  approved  and  rewarded  life. 
The  end  of  all  is  wisdom.  If  the  Gospel  discredits 
any  of  man's  achievements,  declaring  them  to  be 
incompetent  to  satisfy  the  soul  and  educate  the 
nature,  it  is  always  only  that  it  may  insist  upon  a 
higher  knowledge.  Christ  was  a  teacher.  Christ  is 
a  teacher  forever.  If  He  declares,  as  He  certainly 
does,  that  no  scholastic  culture,  and  no  skill  in  the 
arts  of  life,  and  no  acquaintance  with  the  ways  of 
men,  can  save  a  soul,  it  is  only  that  He  may  insist 
upon  another  knowledge,  only  that  He  may  insist 
that  man  must  know  his  own  soul,  and  the  deep 
difference  of  right  and  wrong,  and  the  infinite  holi- 
ness of  God.  These  are  true  knowledges.  "  That 
they  might  know  Thee,  the  only  true  God,  and  Jesus 
Christ  whom  Thou  hast  sent."  It  is  of  all  impor- 
tance that  we  should  know  that  the  Christian  life  is  a 
life  of  knowledge,  not  of  ignorance.  It  is  a  separate, 
a  higher  region  of  knowledge  than  that  to  which  we 
generally  give  the  name ;  but  it  is  knowledge  still. 
It  is  the  apprehension  of  truths,  of  those  vast  truths 
which  the  senses  cannot  discover  nor  the  intellect 


168  THE   PKINCIPLE   OF   THE   CRUST. 

evolve,  but  which  through  the  open  avenues  of  the 
spirit  enter  in  and  occupy  the  life.  Who  can  tell 
what  knowledge  of  the  earth,  and  of  the  history  of 
man,  and  of  the  things  the  Rabbis  taught  in  their 
solemn  school,  was  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
yet  who  doubts  His  wisdom,  who  dares  to  call  Him 
ignorant  or  foolish  ?  In  every  age  and  every  land, 
except  the  lightest  and  most  superficial,  this  higher 
wisdom  has  been  recognized  and  treasured.  To  the 
purest  and  most  exalted  souls  it  has  seemed  to  be  the 
one  precious  thing  on  earth  ;  all  other  kinds  of  knowl- 
edge have  seemed  to  be  easy  sacrifices,  if  by  their  loss 
it  could  be  won.  Let  us  beware  that  we  do  not  de- 
spise this  spiritual  wisdom,  which  is  the  ultimate  treas- 
ure of  the  human  soul. 

And  yet  I  must  not  seem  to  talk  as  if  this  spiritual 
wisdom  involved  the  final  and  perpetual  sacrifice  of 
all  the  other  attainments  of  man.  I  must  once  more 
return  to  the  Parable  of  the  Crusted  ground.  You 
break  up  the  hard  hindering  surface,  and,  as  I  pointed 
out,  it  becomes  part  of  the  soil  on  which  the  sunshine 
and  the  rain  descend  and  out  of  which  the  flowers 
grow.  So  you  break  up  the  crusted  conceit  of  human 
wisdom,  and  its  fragments  make  part  of  the  simplified 
and  softened  human  nature  into  which  pours  the 
higher  wisdom  of  the  grace  of  God. 

What  is  the  crust  upon  your  life,  my  friend,  that 
keeps  out  holy  influence  ?  Is  it  the  knowledge  you 
have  gained  from  books?  Is  it  the  multiplied  com- 
plexity of  your  affairs  ?  Is  it  the  busyness  of  every 
day?  Is  it  your  complicated  relations  witli  your 
friend?     Is  it  the  richness  of  physical  life  satisfied 


THE  PKINCIPLE  OF  THE  CEUST.  169 

with  its  abundance,  health  rejoicing  in  itself  ?  It  may- 
be any  one  of  these.  What  shall  you  pray  to  God 
for  ?  Oh,  pray  to  Him  to  break  this  crusted  hindrance 
all  to  pieces.  It  need  not  be  that  the  possession  itself 
should  be  taken  away.  What  you  want  to  lose  is  the 
conceit  in  the  possession.  You  want  to  learn  that  it 
cannot  satisfy  you.  Then,  when  you  have  learnt 
that,  the  real  satisfaction,  the  only  real  satisfaction, 
can  come  in.  And  then,  when  they  have  been  put  in 
their  true  place,  these  things,  knowledge  and  wealth 
and  health  and  the  complexity  of  life,  which  once 
hindered  the  divine  wisdom,  may  become  the  means 
by  which  it  takes  possession  of  and  spreads  itself 
through  the  hfe.  This  is  the  dream  we  dare  to  dream 
for  ourselves  and  for  our  brethren.  Now,  it  is  your 
learning,  your  busyness,  your  physical  health  which 
keeps  you  from,  which  keeps  from  you,  the  inflow, 
the  influence  of  God.  Sometime  it  shall  be  through 
those  very  possessions  —  learning,  busyness,  physical 
strength,  —  broken  out  of  their  conceit  and  made 
capable  by  humble  consecration  of  their  true  min- 
istry, that  God  shall  come  to  you. 

What  shall  bring  about  so  great  a  change  ?  Noth- 
ing can  do  it  but  the  overwhelming  love  of  God 
taking  possession  of  your  soul  and  making  you  feel 
through  and  through  that  to  know  Him  is  the  one 
only  satisfactory  attainment  of  a  human  life.  Reach 
that,  and,  whatever  else  you  miss,  your  life  is  rich. 
Lose  that,  and,  whatever  else  you  gain,  your  life  is 
poor.  Reach  that,  and  then  gain  everything  else  you 
can,  and  your  master,  knowledge.  Your  knowledge 
of  God  shaU  dominate  it  all.    Oh,  be  all  the  man  that 


170  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  THE  CRUST. 

it  is  in  you  to  be,  only  at  the  heart  of  all  be  God's 
man,  and  then  it  will  be  safe  and  good  for  you  to  be 
all  the  rest. 

Such  men  may  all  of  us  be  by  the  power  of  Christ. 
Give  yourself  to  Him  simply,  totally,  and  then  live 
as  fully  as  you  can,  letting  Him  claim  all  your  life 
and  fill  it  with  Himself. 


X. 

THE   LEADERSHIP   OF  CHRIST. 

**In  my  Father's  house  are  many  mansions.  I  go  to  prepare  a 
place  for  you :  and  I  will  come  again  and  receive  you  unto  myself." 
—  John  xiv.  2. 

The  disciples  of  Jesus  must  often  have  felt  a 
strange  uneasiness  while  they  were  with  Him.  Close 
as  He  drew  them  to  Him,  well  as  they  came  to  know 
Him,  there  must  have  always  been  a  sense  of  how 
much  greater  He  was  than  they  were,  and  so  a  fear 
lest  sometime  He  should  leave  them.  Have  we  not 
all  felt  something  of  this  sort  when  we  have  had  a 
friend  who  was  far  nobler  and  larger  than  ourselves  ? 
We  lived  in  closest  intimacy  with  him;  our  power 
worked  at  the  same  tasks,  but  all  the  while  we  felt 
that  there  were  other  powers  in  him  which  we  could 
not  match.  Sometime  he  certainly  must  outgo  our 
sphere,  begin  to  do  wider  tasks,  enter  fields  where  we 
could  not  follow  him.  Sometime,  at  least,  when  he  put 
forth  the  wings  of  his  immortality,  and  entered  on  the 
other  life,  our  friend  must  leave  us,  completing  himself 
in  regions  far  beyond  our  powers.  Such  a  feeling 
had  added  keenness  and  pathos  to  many  a  friendship. 
And  we  can  see  traces  of  it  every  now  and  then  in 
the  intercourse  of  Christ  and  His  disciples.  They 
cling  to  Him  as  to  one  whom  they  are  afraid  to  lose. 
Whenever  He  foretells  a  separation  from  them,  they 


172  THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

receive  it  as  if  it  fell  in  with  some  misgiving  of  their 
own.  Every  sensitive  reader  of  the  Gospels  must 
have  felt,  it  seems  to  me,  that  sort  of  fearfulness  in 
all  the  love,  and  anxiety  in  the  midst  of  satisfaction, 
in  the  companionship  of  Jesus  and  the  twelve,  which 
showed  how  they  felt  that  they  must  some  day  lose 
Him,  that  there  was  something  in  Him  which  must 
complete  and  manifest  itself  outside  of  their  sphere. 
"  Whither  I  go,  thither  ye  cannot  come."  When 
Jesus  said  those  words,  they  were  terrible  to  His 
disciples,  just  because  they  confirmed  the  unspoken 
fear  which  was  lurking  in  their  hearts  before. 

We  must  bear  all  this  in  mind,  I  think,  or  else  we 
cannot  wholly  understand  the  feeling  of  our  text. 
I  want  to  speak  to  you  this  morning  from  these 
words  of  Jesus,  which  seem  to  me  to  tell  the  story 
of  all  His  life  with  His  disciples,  and  so  indeed  of  all 
His  life  with  those  whom  His  disciples  represented, 
—  the  Christendom  and  Christian  souls  that  were  to 
come.  They  are  words  which  have  in  them  the 
whole  of  Christianity.  Think,  then,  of  these  disciples 
wondering  whether  they  could  keep  Jesus,  fearing 
that  He  must  leave  them,  fearing  that  the  time 
would  come  when  His  life  would  outgo  theirs  and  go 
to  regions  of  activity  whither  they  could  not  follow 
it.  To  them,  fearing  thus,  Jesus  answers,  "  No. 
Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled.  I  am  going,  indeed, 
but  I  am  going  for  you,  not  away  from  you.  I  go  to 
prepare  a  place  for  you.  In  my  father's  house  to 
which  I  go  are  many  mansions,  and  if  I  go  and  pre- 
pare a  place  for  you,  I  will  come  again  and  receive 
you  unto  myself."     See  what  He  says :  "  There  is  a 


THE   LEADERSHIP  OF   CHRIST.  173 

region  where  we  both  belong.  You  as  much  as  I. 
I  am  going  forward  to  enter  there  so  that  your  en- 
trance may  be  the  easier.  I  am  going  to  open  the 
door,  and  then  am  coming  back  to  take  you  into  my 
power  again  and  carry  you  on  with  myself,  and  the  end 
shall  be  that  we  shall  be  together  there."  Now,  for- 
get that  when  Jesus  said  that  He  was  just  upon  the 
point  of  leaving  this  world.  Forget  for  the  moment 
(we  will  come  back  to  that  before  we  close)  that  the 
first  application  of  the  words  was  to  the  transfer  of 
Christ's  life,  and  His  disciples'  life,  from  earth  to 
heaven.  Think  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  saying  that  be- 
longed wholly  to  this  world,  and  have  we  not  in  this 
utterance  of  Jesus  an  account,  clear  and  intelligible, 
of  the  way  in  which  He  always  led  His  disciples  from 
one  stage  of  life  into  a  higher.  This  is  no  illegitimate 
use  of  the  words.  Christ  could  not  lead  His  followers 
from  earth  to  heaven  except  by  the  same  means  by 
which  He  had  already  led  them  from  one  spiritual 
stage  of  earth  into  another.  We  have,  then,  a  clear 
and  definite  plan  laid  down.  He  says,  when  I  would 
lead  you  forward  I  go  forward  first  myself.  I  estab- 
lish for  myself  a  place  in  the  new  region  where  I 
want  you  to  be.  You  and  I  belong  together,  so  that 
establishing  for  myself  a  place  there  I  really  set  up 
your  right  to  be  there  too.  Then  I  come  back  to 
you,  and  by  the  love  that  is  between  us  I  draw  you 
on  into  the  realm  that  I  have  opened.  That  is  the 
way  I  bring  the  souls  that  belong  to  me  from  strength 
to  strength,  until  before  the  God  of  gods  appeareth 
every  one  of  them  in  Zion. 

I  remember  how  once  travelling  in  Syria  the  guide 


174  THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

upon  whom  we  wholly  depended  disappeared.  By 
and  by  he  came  back  to  us  as  we  rode  along  and  told 
us  where  he  had  been ;  that  in  the  village  which  we 
were  approaching  and  where  we  were  to  spend  the 
night  his  family  lived.  That  he  had  ridden  on  to  see 
that  they  were  ready  to  receive  him  and  to  prepare 
quarters  in  their  house  for  us,  the  travellers  under  his 
charge,  and  now  came  back  to  conduct  us  thither, 
and  by  and  by  he  had  brought  us  where  he  belonged, 
and  where  through  him  provision  had  been  made  and 
a  welcome  was  waiting  for  us. 

Let  us  look,  then,  at  this  plan  of  Christ's  culture. 
It  is  really  the  same  by  which  any  man  leads  another 
who  believes  in  him  on  to  loftier  and  loftier  things. 
I  spoke  about  the  friend  who  seems  to  be  perfectly 
one  with  you,  yet  whom  you  are  always  lurkingly 
afraid  of  losing  because  you  feel  that  there  is  in  him 
the  capacity  for  being  something  which  you  are  not, 
and  cannot  be.  Suppose  some  day  that  your  friend 
does  leave  you,  not  that  his  bodily  presence  is  taken 
away.  Still  he  walks  by  your  side,  perhaps  lives  in 
your  house,  but  all  of  a  sudden  he  begins  some  higher 
life,  enters  upon  some  self-sacrifice  for  which  you  are 
not  ready.  Have  you  ever  had  such  an  experience  ? 
It  seems  as  if  you  had  lost  your  friend.  You  reach 
out  after  him,  but  there  he  is  away  above  you,  walking 
on  higher  ground,  doing  diviner  things.  But  gradu- 
ally you  find  that  you  have  not  lost  him.  Your  love 
for  him,  his  love  for  you,  continues.  You  become 
aware  that  he  is  drawing  you  upward  into  that  new 
region  where  he  has  entered,  and  which  through  his 
entrance  has  come  to  seem  familiar  and  not  so  far 


THE  LEADEESHIP   OF  CHRIST  175 

away  to  you.  The  self-sacrifice  seems  not  so  unnatu- 
ral or  hard  now  that  he  is  living  in  it.  Your  love  for 
him  draws  you  on  into  his  company,  and  makes  you 
attempt  unattempted  things.  He  has  outgone  you 
with  his  goodness,  but  he  comes  back  after  you  with 
his  love.  He  has  gone  to  prepare  a  place  for  you, 
and  he  has  come  again  and  received  you  to  himself, 
that  where  he  is  there  you  may  be  also. 

Or  just  reverse  the  case.  Suppose  that  you  are 
the  more  enterprising  and  ambitious  soul.  Your  friend 
loves  you,  but  he  lags  behind,  appears  unconscious  of 
his  higher  powers,  of  the  higher  life  that  he  might 
live.  How  can  you  start  him?  Evidently  you  must 
start  yourself.  You  must  go  out  yourself  into  the 
region  where  you  know  he  ought  to  be.  It  will  seem 
as  if  you  were  leaving  him.  You  speak  to  him  some 
morning  and  say,  *'  This  is  all  very  pleasant,  but  I 
will  live  no  longer  in  this  easy,  self-indulgent  life.  I 
am  determined  to  be  up  and  at  work  for  other  people." 
Your  friend  remonstrates.  He  begs  you  not  to  leave 
him.  But  you  go  on.  And  though  at  first  you  seem 
to  have  gone  away  from  him,  your  higher  life  becomes 
a  revelation  to  him.  Your  love  is  drawing  him  up. 
It  seems  less  and  less  an  impossibility  that  he  too 
should  live  a  noble  and  unselfish  life,  and  by  and  by 
you  two  are  living  in  a  higher  fellowship  in  the  higher 
land.  "What  is  it  that  has  happened  ?  You  went  to 
prepare  a  place  for  him,  and  then  you  came  again 
and  received  him  unto  yourself. 

Ah !  there  is  really  no  friendship  worthy  of  the 
sacred  name  where  each  of  the  two  friends  is  not 
thus  always  making  ready  places   for   the   other  in 


176  THE   LEADERSHIP   OP   CHRIST. 

higher  and  higher  mansions  of  the  Father's  house, 
where  each  is  not  always  opening  to  the  other  some 
higher  life.  Do  not  dare  to  think  that  friendship  is 
a  mere  pleasant  amusement.  Do  not  dare  to  take 
out  of  it  the  moral  responsibility  that  makes  its  depth 
and  sacredness. 

Two  merchants  are  partners  in  a  selfish  business. 
No  thought  of  charity  finds  any  entrance  into  their 
sordid  shop.  By  and  by  one  of  them  learns  the  duty 
and  the  joy  of  helping  other  peoj)le.  It  seems  as  if 
their  sympathy  was  broken  when  one  has  this  new 
taste,  this  new  desire.  But  if  the  other  be  worthy  of  the 
partnership,  the  time  comes  when  he  wins  it  too,  and 
the  broken  sympathy  is  reunited  on  a  higher  plane. 
Two  boys  are  boon  companions  in  each  other's  frolics. 
By  and  by  one  of  them  is  touched  with  the  desire  of 
learning.  But  if  his  comrade  is  worthy  of  him,  he,  too, 
after  a  while  is  brought  up  by  his  friend's  fellowship 
into  the  realm  that  he  has  entered.  Husband  and  wife 
live  together  in  perfect  domestic  sympathy.  Not  a 
thought  of  either  that  the  other  does  not  share.  But 
when  one  of  them  enters  into  Christ  and  knows  His 
peace  and  joy,  it  seems  as  if  for  the  first  time  they 
had  separated.  But  the  soul  that  has  found  the 
Saviour  comes  back  with  its  love,  and  tells  the  story 
of  the  Saviour  it  has  found,  and,  Andrew-like,  brings 
the  other  soul  to  the  Christ  in  whose  love  it  has 
found  a  place.  Everywhere  this  ministry  of  life  to 
life  is  finding  its  illustrations. 

And  now  this  is  the  way  in  which  Jesus  had  been 
treating  those  disciples  of  His  for  the  three  years  in 
which  He  had  been  with  them.     The  purpose  of  His 


THE  LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST.  177 

mission  liad  demanded  that  He  should  first  of  all  take 
those  twelve  men  and  introduce  them  into  higher 
thoughts,  new  ways  of  living,  new  standards,  new 
ideas  which  they  had  never  known  before.  How 
could  He  do  that?  Several  ways  were  open.  He 
might  read  them  long  lessons,  give  them  abstract 
teaching.  He  might  put  on  His  power,  and,  awing 
them  with  His  miracles,  make  them  obey  Him  as  he 
pointed  them  to  a  new  life.  To  one  who  reads  the 
Gospels  truly,  it  becomes  evident,  I  think,  that  He 
deliberately  chose  another  way,  a  way  that  involved 
His  own  personality  and  made  all  His  disciples'  prog- 
ress consist  in  following  Him.  First  He  knit  His 
life  in  with  theirs.  The  cords  were  twisted  together 
as  they  sat  and  as  they  walked  together,  as  He  shared 
their  board  and  bed.  He  made  them  know  that  He 
was  what  they  were,  and  they  what  He  was.  He  did 
this  devotedly,  laboriously ;  and  then  when  they  were 
feeling  this  completely,  some  day  He  suddenly  took  a 
step  across  some  border  which  they  had  thought  im- 
passable —  He  stood  clothed  in  light  in  some  new 
land  which  they  had  counted  inaccessible.  He  did 
some  act,  He  manifested  some  quality,  to  which  they 
never  had  aspired.  He  put  himself  close  to  God  ;  and 
then  when  they  stood  amazed  and  seemed  to  them- 
selves to  have  lost  Him  He  came  back  to  them  by  His 
love  without  coming  out  of  the  new  goodness  which 
He  had  entered,  and  He  said,  "  No,  I  am  this  new 
thing  not  for  myself  but  for  you.  By  all  the  oneness 
between  us,  you  can  be  this  as  well  as  I,  you  can  be 
holy  as  I  am  holy.  Now  by  my  holiness,  come  in. 
Be  holy  because  I  am  holy.     I  have  proved  it  possi- 


178  THE  LEADERSHIP   OF  CHRIST. 

ble  for  such  as  you  and  I  am.  I  have  prepared  a 
place  for  you.  Now  I  am  come  again  to  receive  you 
unto  myself." 

It  was  no  accidental  habit.  It  was  a  deliberate 
specific  culture.  It  will  be  well  worth  while  to  linger 
and  point  out  two  or  three  instances  of  its  applica- 
tion. They  are  the  old  stories  which  we  have  known 
from  childhood.  Jesus  was  going  up  to  Jerusalem, 
and  He  had  to  pass  through  Samaria.  The  Samari- 
tans would  not  receive  Him,  because  he  was  a  Jew  and 
going  to  the  sacred  city  of  the  Jews.  His  disciples 
instantly  were  full  of  Jewish  indignation.  "  A 
miracle,  a  miracle,"  they  cried,  "to  destroy  those 
enemies  of  the  Lord !  "  "  Wilt  thou  that  we  command 
fire  to  come  down  from  heaven  to  consume  them  as 
Elijah  did  ?  "  They  looked  round  for  Jesus  to  keep 
company  with  them  in  their  rage.  But  where  was 
He?  Afar  off,  walking  in  the  cool,  serene  heaven  of 
Pity  and  Toleration.  "  Ye  know  not  what  manner  of 
spirit  ye  are  of,"  He  said.  "  The  Son  of  man  is  not 
come  to  destroy  men's  lives,  but  to  save  them."  He 
had  eluded  them.  He  had  gone  where  they  could 
not  follow  Him.  They  seemed  to  have  lost  Him.  But 
still  His  love  was  around  them,  and  by  and  by  He 
came  to  them  and  received  them  unto  Himself ;  took 
them  up  into  the  tolerance  where  He  Himself  had 
entered.  And  the  time  came  when  Peter  and  John 
were  laying  hands  on  these  Samaritans,  welcoming 
them  into  the  Christian  churches.  Or  again,  two 
disciples  came  to  Jesus  and  said,  "  There  is  to  be  a 
kingdom  here  upon  the  earth,  here  in  Judea.  Let  us 
sit,  we  pray  thee,  as  thy  Viziers,  one  on  thy  right 


THE    LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST.  179 

hand,  the  other  on  thy  left."  It  was  all  of  the  earth, 
earthy.  They  wanted  to  hear  of  the  cabinet  of  the 
new  kingdom.  Bnt  where  was  Jesus  ?  "  It  shall  be 
given  to  those  for  whom  it  is  prepared  of  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven."  He  was  far  away  from  earth. 
It  was  all  heavenly,  all  spiritual  to  Him.  They  did 
not  understand  Him.  They  had  lost  Him.  But  He 
came  back  for  them  and  took  them  up  into  His  own 
spiritual  conceptions,  for  the  time  came  when  a  new 
ambition  had  swallowed  up  the  old  in  John,  and  he 
was  writing  in  his  Epistle,  "  We  know  that  when  He 
shall  appear  we  shall  be  like  Him,  for  we  shall  see 
Him  as  He  is."  Or  take  one  more.  Jesus  lived  very 
near  to  His  mother.  They  must  have  understood 
each  other  deeply.  But  one  day  He  outwent  her.  He 
entered  into  a  new  consecration  to  His  Father  which 
she  had  not  imagined.  Her  touching  words  we  can 
hear  still  when  she  seemed  to  have  lost  Him.  "Son, 
why  hast  thou  dealt  thus  with  us  ?  "  But  she  had  not 
lost  Him.  As  she  "  kept  all  these  things  and  pondered 
them  in  her  heart,"  she  saw  that  for  her,  too,  there 
was  a  mansion  of  self-consecration  in  that  Father's 
house  where  her  Son  had  entered.  And  when  His 
consecration  at  last  completed  itself  at  the  cross,  she 
was  with  Him  there  in  a  compliance  as  deep  as  her 
suffering. 

This  is  Christ's  way.  Wherever  he  would  have 
His  disciples  go.  He  goes  first  Himself,  and  through  the 
door  which  He  has  opened  He  draws  them  by  His 
love.  That  is  the  whole  philosophy  of  Christian 
culture.  And  that  is  the  meaning  of  the  Incarna- 
tion.    God  entered  into  human  life ;  made  Himself 


180  THE   LEADERSHIP    OE   CHRIST. 

one  with  it  as  He  only  could  have  done  with  a  nature 
that  was  originally  one  with  His  own.  He  became 
man  as  He  could  not  have  become  brute  or  stone. 
Then  in  that  human  nature  He  outwent  humanity. 
He  opened  yet  unopened  gates  of  human  possibility. 
He  showed  what  man  might  be,  how  great,  how  god- 
like !  And  by  the  love  and  oneness  He  has  always  been 
claiming  man  for  the  greatness  whose  possibility  He 
showed.  As  we  think  of  the  Incarnation  deeply, 
these  three  stages  come  in  one  thought.  First,  the 
God  in  Christ  seems  very  near  to  us  as  we  think  of 
His  love.  Then  He  seems  very  far  above  us  as  we 
think  of  His  holiness,  and  then  again  He  seems  to 
bring  us  very  near  to  Himself  as  we  feel  His  power. 
He  is  one  with  us.  He  goes  beyond  us,  and  He 
comes  again  and  receives  us  unto  Himself. 

Thus  we  trace  Christ's  treatment  of  those  first 
disciples.  And  what  then?  Here  we  live  at  this 
late  day.  Is  any  such  method  at  work,  any  such  cul- 
ture possible  now  ?  My  dear  friend,  one  thing  is 
certainly  true  about  Christ.  That  all  that  He  has 
ever  been  He  must  forever  be.  All  that  He  was  to 
those  first  disciples,  He  must  be  ready  to  be  to  any 
one,  even  the  least  of  His  disciples  always.  His 
power  is  nothing  at  any  one  point  if  it  is  not  power- 
ful at  all  points  ;  nothing,  if  not  eternal.  How  is  it 
possible,  then,  that  Christ  should  do  for  you  and  me 
what  He  did  for  Peter  and  John,  and  Matthew  and 
Nathanael  ?  It  is  not  hard  to  see,  and  to  many  people 
living  just  such  lives  as  we  live  it  has  become  the 
most  real  of  experiences.  Jesus,  the  Jesus  of  the 
Gospels,  fastens  His  life  to  our  life.     By  His  life  and 


THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST.  181 

death,  bearing  witness  of  His  love,  He  twines  Himself 
into  our  being.  To  love  Him  becomes  a  real  thing. 
He  is  close  by  our  side.  He  is  right  in  our  lot  every- 
day. Then  as  we  go  on  living  thus  with  Him  some 
crisis  of  our  life  occurs,  some  need  of  action.  We  are 
put  to  some  test,  and  as  we  stand  doubting,  or  as  we 
go  and  do  the  act  in  our  low  way,  Christ,  right  by 
our  side,  does  it  in  His  higher  way.  Not  that  His 
hands  visibly  touch  our  tools  and  do  the  work  we 
have  to  do.  But  it  becomes  evident  to  us  what  He 
would  do  under  our  circumstances,  what  one  only 
thing  it  would  be  possible  for  Him  to  do  as  we  are 
situated.  It  is  very  different  from  what  we  are 
actually  doing.  We  are  truckling  to  men's  opinion, 
compromising  principle,  telling  a  lie.  And  it  is  made 
manifest  to  us  that  Jesus  in  just  those  same  circum- 
stances would  defy  men^s  judgments  and  stand  by 
principle  and  tell  the  truth.  We  are  not  up  to  that. 
We  see  Him  leave  us.  He  outgoes  us.  But  if  we 
really  love  Him,  if  our  life  has  grown  one  with  His, 
He  does  not  leave  us  really.  His  going  on  into  prin- 
ciple, honor,  truth,  and  God  is  a  pledge  and  promise 
that  in  those  holy  homes  there  is  a  place  for  us,  too, 
and  soon  we  are  restless  unless  we  follow  Him,  and 
the  gates  of  that  nobler  life  which  He  has  opened 
shine  before  us,  and  His  love  draws  us  on  to  be  with 
Him. 

Look  at  the  progress  of  Christendom.  Christ  first 
touched  the  world's  heart,  fastened  Himself  into  the 
world's  life.  He  did  not  begin  with  a  lecture  or  a 
lesson.  He  began  by  coming  Himself  to  the  world  ; 
and  the  world  took  Him,  as  it  has  taken  so  many  of 


182  THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

His  choicest  treasures,  through  suffering  and  death 
into  her  life.  And  then  having  come  to  her  and  fas- 
tened His  love  upon  her,  He  went  away  from  her.  He 
set  up  impracticable  standards.  He  lived  an  appar- 
ently impossible  life.  The  world  was  full  of  war,  and 
He  preached  peace.  The  world  was  full  of  pride,  and 
He  was  humble.  The  world  was  false,  and  He  by 
every  word  and  action  said,  "  Be  true."  The  world, 
looking  at  Christ,  said,  "  We  never  can  be  that;"  but 
more  and  more  the  world  has  become  that ;  Christ  first 
touching  it  by  His  love  has  little  by  little  drawn  it  on  , 
into  His  character ;  and  peace,  humility,  and  truth  are 
no  longer  vague  dreams,  but  recognized  ambitions, 
earnest  hopes,  here  and  there  real  attainments,  among 
men. 

And  so  I  ask  an  earnest  Christian  how  he  began  to 
pray,  when  it  first  came  to  seem  possible  to  him  that 
he  should  forgive  his  enemy  or  live  in  the  realized 
companionship  of  God?  And  his  answer  must  be, 
"  Christ,  my  Lord,  having  bound  my  life  to  His  life, 
went  there  first  and  then  drew  my  life  after  His.  I 
saw  Him  pray.  I  heard  Him  speak  forgiveness  from 
the  cross.  I  watched  His  feet  treading  close  to  God, 
and  because  I  must  be  where  He  was,  I  left  the  old 
life  and  went  with  Him  into  the  new.  My  love  to  Him 
was  first  the  revealer  of  the  higher  possibility,  and 
then  the  power  of  entrance  into  it. 

This  is  what  I  really  understand  by  being  saved 
by  Christ's  love.  This  is  what  it  means,  dear  friend, 
when  always  you  are  urged  to  love  Christ  so  that 
you  may  be  saved.  It  is  not  that  Christ  stands  jeal- 
ously and  arbitrarily  and  will  not  admit  you  to  His 


THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST.  183 

privileges  until  you  have  certain  feelings  about  Him. 
It  is  that  only  by  loving  Him  can  your  life  be  so 
bound  to  His  that  where  He  goes  you  will  go  with 
Him,  into  holiness  and  peace.  Alas  !  that  men  are 
so  unambitious.  Here  is  a  man  who  in  times  of 
business  trouble  is  distressed  and  anxious.  He  can- 
not help  letting  his  troubles  depress  him.  He  is 
discouraged  and  disheartened.  Is  that  necessary? 
Who  is  the  noblest  man  that  ever  lived  ?  Jesus 
Christ,  you  answer.  And  do  you  know  what  He 
would  be  if  He  were  in  your  place  ?  "  Yes,"  you  say  ; 
"  brave,  strong,  hopeful,  conscious  always  that  there 
are  better  things  than  money  —  ready  to  lose  the 
fortune  if  He  could  get  nearer  God,  calm  and  serene 
and  undismayed."  Very  well,  that  is  what  the  high- 
est man  would  do  in  your  place.  And  why  are  you 
not  doing  it?  "  Because  I  am  not  Christ,"  you  say  ; 
"  I  must  not  expect  of  myself  what  He  would  do." 
Ah!  that  is  just  your  error.  That  is  just  where  you 
lose  the  truth  of  the  Incarnation.  Whatever  Christ 
is  we  can  be.  Wherever  Christ  goes  we  can  go. 
Say  that  over  and  over  to  yourself.  Read  the  assur- 
ance of  that  written  on  every  page  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. He  does  go  away  from  you.  He  leaves  you 
in  your  lowness  and  enters  into  the  higher  lands  of 
God,  but  only  that  He  may  take  your  soul  afterwards 
and  bring  it  there  to  Himself.  You  are  a  slave  here 
to  the  world,  to  men,  to  business.  Your  only  free- 
dom is  in  Intercourse  with  Christ.  Bind  your  soul  to 
His,  and  it  must  rise  with  Him  into  His  liberty.  You 
know  that  this  is  true.  You  know  that  you  could 
not  be  such  a  slave  of  the  world,  so  beaten  by  temp- 


184  THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

tation,  so  trodden  down  by  trouble,  if  you  really 
loved  Christ.  In  that  love  there  must  be  freedom 
and  power  to  go  where  He  is,  away  from  anxiety  and 
sin  into  peace  and  holiness. 

There  is  one  feature  about  the  truth  which  I  have 
tried  to  preach  to  you  this  morning  which  is  very 
beautiful.  The  truth  is  that  every  Christian  enters 
into  every  higher  spiritual  condition  not  absolutely 
and  by  himself,  but  through  Christ.  But  one  conse- 
quence of  that  will  be  that  every  higher  spiritual 
state  will  shine  to  the  Christian  soul  that  lives  there, 
not  merely  with  its  own  lustre,  but  with  the  personal 
dearness  of  the  Christ  through  whom  the  soul  has 
gained  its  entrance.  Just  as  a  delightful  study,  into 
which  some  dear  friend  first  initiated  you,  has  always 
over  and  above  its  own  delightfulness  a  beauty  that 
comes  from  your  love  to  him ;  so  the  soul  that  Jesus 
has  made  holy  lives  always  in  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
made  more  exquisite  and  dear  by  the  loveliness  of 
Christ.  Of  every  (iarthly  grace  as  well  as  of  the 
heavenly  glory  it  is  true  that  "  the  Lamb  is  the  light 
thereof."  Every  new  attainment  which  the  Christian 
makes  is  but  an  entrance  into  another  mansion  which 
his  Saviour  has  made  ready  for  him.  He  grows  brave  ; 
but  Christ  was  brave  before  him.  He  enters  into 
self-sacrifice ;  but  Clirist  leads  him  with  His  cross.  He 
finds  the  home  of  his  soul  at  last  in  perfect  commun- 
ion with  God ;  but  the  Godhood  is  familiar  and  doubly 
dear  to  him  because  of  the  Christhood  through  which 
he  enters  it.  All  virtue,  all  holiness  and  truth 
throughout  the  universe  loses  the  chill  of  abstractness 
and  glows  with  the  warmth  of  personal  love. 


THE  LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST.  185 

This  brings  us  around  to  say  a  few  last  words  upon 
the  first  application  of  these  words  of  Jesus  to  which 
I  just  alluded  at  the  beginning  of  the  sermon.  He 
was  just  leaving  this  world  for  the  other  when  He 
spoke  them  first.  When  Christ  has  led  His  discij^le 
on  and  on  from  stage  to  stage  of  spiritual  growth,  at 
last  He  opens  the  door  and  gives  him  entrance  into 
heaven.  Remember  always,  what  I  have  tried  to  in- 
sist upon  this  morning,  that  that  new  change  is  of  the 
same  sort  as  the  others  that  have  gone  before  it. 
Whatever  other  joy  and  Glory  may  be  waiting  for  us 
in  heaven,  the  Glory  and  the  joy  which  will  be  most 
to  us,  and  which  we  ought  most  of  all  to  anticipate,  is 
that  there  there  will  be  new  regions  of  spiritual  life 
thrown  open,  new  and  deeper  experiences  of  the  soul 
made  possible,  deeper  knowledge  of  God,  deeper 
knowledge  of  ourselves,  deeper  delight  in  purity. 

If  that  is  really  what  we  are  looking  forward  to  in 
heaven,  then  it  is  easy  to  realize  that  the  same  Christ 
who  has  been  our  leader  in  each  spiritual  advance 
which  we  have  ever  made  here,  will  be  the  leader 
who  will  bring  us  there.  Oh,  the  next  life  seems  all 
so  vague  to  us  !  We  reach  out  after  it.  We  believe 
in  it,  but  how  hard  it  is  for  us  to  take  hold  of  it ! 
How  can  we  ?  Only  by  living  here  with  Him  who 
is  to  bring  us  there.  Only  by  growing  so  familiar 
with  Christ  that  when  He  outruns  us  and  enters  in 
behind  the  veil,  when  the  strings  of  His  influence 
outgo  our  mortal  state  and  run  into  the  darkness, 
we  may  still  feel  the  tug  upon  them  from  beyond  the 
darkness  and   know  the   reality  of   heaven  because 


186  THE   LEADERSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

our  Christ  is  there.  By  constant  living  with  the  Eter- 
nal, so  only  can  you  realize  Eternity. 

To  one  who  believes  that  Christ,  having  led  him  on 
through  this  life,  will  lead  him  at  last  by  the  same 
culture  to  the  other  world,  the  supreme  expectation 
of  that  other  world  is  that  there  he  will  see  Christ. 
It  ceases  to  be  dreadful  and  far  off.  When  he  sees 
his  friend  die,  when  he  gives  his  little  child  to  death, 
there  is  nothing  cold  or  lonely  or  forlorn  about  it. 
He  knows  the  Christ  to  whom  they  go ;  when  he 
thinks  of  his  own  death,  it  is  only  of  the  opening  of 
another  door  behind  which  the  Hand,  whose  pressure 
he  knows  well  already,  shall  clasp  his  hand  a  little 
more  closely  to  lead  him  on  into  a  little  richer  light 
and  happiness.  It  is  the  same  Christ  who  has  been 
making  a  place  in  us  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  who 
will  at  last  make  a  place  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
for  us. 

To  welcome  all  His  leadings  now  so  cordially  that 
we  shall  know  our  Leader  when  He  opens  the  last 
great  door ;  to  be  always  following  Him  so  obediently 
that  we  shall  have  faith  to  follow  Him  even  when  He 
leads  us  into  the  river  and  into  darkness,  —  this,  and 
only  this,  is  readiness  for  death.  May  God  grant  it 
to  us  all  I 


XL 
PEACE    IN    BELIEVING. 

"  Now   the   God  of  hope   fill  you   with    all   Joy  and  Peace   in 
plieving,  that  ye  may  abound  in  Hope  through  the  Power  of  the 
Holy  Ghost."  —  Romans  xv.  13. 

Although  I  wish  to  speak  this  morning  of  only 
one  phrase  occurring  in  this  verse,  I  quote  the  whole 
verse,  because  it  will  be  good  for  us  if  we  can  catch 
its  spirit  and  feel  the  enthusiasm  that  pervades  it. 
See  how  the  most  glowing  words  are  crowded  into 
it :  "  The  God  of  Hope,"  "  Joy,"  "  Peace,"  "  Believ- 
ing," then  "  Hope,"  again,  and  "  Power,"  and  "  the 
Holy  Ghost."  Any  short  verse  with  words  like 
these  in  it  must  have  vitality  and  vigor.  Out  of  the 
centre  of  it  let  us  take  one  expression.  St.  Paul 
asks  for  these  Roman  Christians  that  they  may  be 
filled  with  "Peace  in  Believing."  To  see  just  what 
he  is  asking  for  them,  what  "  Peace  "  is,  and  what 
"  Believing  "  is,  and  how  Peace  everywhere  comes  by 
Believing,  this  will  be  our  subject.  We  feel  at  once, 
I  think,  that  we  are  dealing  with  large  words,  with 
words  which  have  something  of  the  manifoldness  of 
life,  and  which  like  life  it  is  hard  to  reduce  to  a  clear 
definition.  Take  this  word  "  Peace."  We  all  have 
our  ideas  about  it.  To  all  of  us  it  represents  some- 
thing very  attractive  and  complete.     But  I  suppose 


188  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

that  to  all  men  Peace  means  something  different  ac- 
cording to  their  different  characters.  And  the  main 
difference  must  be  in  the  positiveness  ornegativeness 
with  which  it  presents  itself  to  them.  To  the  slug- 
gish man,  peace  must  mean  mere  repose,  the  cessa- 
tion of  work.  To  the  active  man  peace  must  mean 
merely  the  power  and  chance  of  work  free  from  inter- 
ference. "  Leave  me  at  Peace,"  says  the  lazy  man, 
and  as  he  says  it  he  drops  the  tools  which  the  world 
has  thrust  into  his  hands  and  lies  down  to  go  to 
sleep.  "  Leave  me  at  Peace,"  says  the  busy  man, 
and  turns  to  his  tools  and  his  task,  with  the  thought 
of  how  much  he  can  do  when  he  and  his  task  are  left 
to  one  another.  The  men  of  negatives  and  the  men 
of  positives  are  everywhere,  —  the  men  who  describe 
things  by  what  they  are  not,  and  the  men  who  de- 
scribe things  by  what  they  are.  It  seems  to  be  one 
of  the  fundamental  divisions  of  human  character. 
And  there  is  hardly  any  idea  in  relation  to  which 
this  difference  comes  out  more  clearly  than  in  rela- 
tion to  this  idea  of  Peace.  But  evidently  the  posi- 
tive man's  notion  of  it  must  be  the  truest  and 
highest.  Peace  must  be  in  its  essence  something 
real  in  a  man's  life,  and  the  exemptions  and  negations 
that  it  brings  must  be  its  incidents.  And  when  we 
look  carefully  for  a  definition  that  shall  be  positive 
and  that  shall  include  the  highest  idea  of  peace,  must 
it  not  be  this  ?  Peace  is  the  entire  harmony  between 
the  nature  of  anything  and  its  circumstances.  That 
is  what  every  healthy  aspiration  after  peace  is  really 
seeking  for.  Whether  it  be  high  in  its  sphere  or 
low,    whether  it  be    the   star  moving  calmly  in   its 


PEACE   IN   RELIEVING.  189 

orbit,  or  the  seed  silently  wedding  itself  to  the  rich 
ground  in  which  it  is  buried,  or  whether  it  be  the 
laborer  at  his  plough  or  the  statesman  in  the  capitol, 
wherever  there  is  a  nature  in  harmony  with  its  sur- 
roundings, so  that  they  call  out  all  its  best  activities 
and  at  the  same  time  it  is  able  to  answer  all  their 
demands,  there  is  Peace.  All  the  disturbances  of 
peace  come  from  the  breaking  of  this  harmony. 
Sometimes  on  one  side,  and  sometimes  on  the  other. 
Sometimes  the  nature  has  powers  and  capacities  for 
which  the  surroundings  offer  no  employment.  Some- 
times the  surroundings  teem  with  demands  for  which 
the  nature  has  no  powers.  In  either  case  you  have 
unrest  and  discontent.  But  when  the  two  corre- 
spond, then  everything  moves  smoothly.  There  is 
abundant  motion.  There  is  no  sleep.  But  motion 
without  fatigue,  or  waste,  or  need  of  refreshment  or 
repair,  that  is  the  finished  idea  of  Peace.  We  talk 
about  the  "Peace  of  God."  Is  not  this  really  the  con- 
ception which,  carried  to  its  highest,  reaches  that  sub- 
lime idea  ?  "  My  father  worketh  hitherto  and  I 
work,"  said  Jesus.  It  is  no  Oriental  apathy.  The 
Christian  thought  of  God  is  full  of  interest,  zeal, 
emotion,  action,  only  it  is  always  perfectly  balanced 
with  its  surroundings,  since  its  surroundings  are  the 
utterance  and  creation  of  itself.  God  and  the  uni- 
verse in  their  unbroken  harmony.  The  universe 
never  asking  anything  of  God  which  God  cannot  do. 
God  having  no  power  or  affection  which  the  universe 
cannot  utter.  That  is  the  Perfect  Peace.  To  match 
that  consummate  Peace  in  our  lower  little  sphere,  to 
be  to  our  world  as  God  is  to  His,  to  work  as  perpetu- 


190  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

ally  and  yet  as  calmly  and  so  effectively  as  He  works ; 
that  is  the  real  thing  that  we  pi'ay  for  when  we  ask 
for  one  another  the  Peace  of  God. 

With  this  idea  of  what  Peace  really  is,  we  can  see 
where  the  failures  come  in  of  the  attempts  at  peace 
which  men  are  always  making.  The  secret  of  Peace 
is  in  perfectly  harmonious  relations  between  a  nature 
and  its  surroundings.  The  loss  of  Peace,  then,  will 
come  either  in  the  abandonment  or  in  the  distortion 
of  these  relations.  Wherever  any  being  withdraws 
itself,  and  does  not  have  an3^thing  to  do  with  those 
objects  and  tasks  to  which  it  naturally  belongs,  it 
loses  its  true  peace.  Wherever  it  remains  among 
them  and  deals  with  them,  but  uses  them  wrongly,  it 
too  has  no  peace.  It  will  be  clearer  if  we  take  an 
instance.  Here  is  your  nature,  and  here  is  its  envi- 
ronment, its  surrounding,  which  is  the  society  iu 
which  you  live.  The  result  of  your  living  with  that 
society  ought  to  be  one  large,  quiet,  healthy,  active, 
restful  condition  which  could  be  rightly  named  by 
the  great  name  "  Peace."  You  ought  to  help  that 
society,  to  make  it  purer,  wiser,  happier;  and  you 
ought  to  feel  it  continually  helping  you,  making  j^ou 
happier,  wiser,  purer.  You  lose  all  the  richness  of 
such  a  life  in  either  of  two  ways.  You  may  re- 
fuse to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  society  you 
live  in,  make  yourself  a  recluse,  or  you  may  enter 
into  false  relationship  with  it,  be  arrogant,  and  over- 
bearing, and  selfish,  and  try  to  compel  it  to  minister 
to  your  pride  and  luxury,  or  be  servile  and  obsequi- 
ous, and  let  it  domineer  over  your  conscience  and 
self-respect.     In   either  case,  you   are  not   at  peace 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVmG.  191 

with  it,  and  you  live  a  peaceless  life.  A  disused  re- 
lation, or  a  misused  relation,  is  fatal  to  the  comfort- 
able and  healthy  action  of  a  life.  It  is  as  if  you  had 
to  travel  around  the  world  or  through  a  long  stretch 
of  woods  with  one  companion.  To  ignore  him,  and 
act  as  if  he  were  not  walking  by  your  side,  or  tp 
quarrel  with  him,  or  to  impose  on  him,  or  let  him 
impose  himself  on  you,  either  of  these  destroys  the 
pleasure  and  profit  of  your  journey.  Only  in  mutual 
helpfulness  and  respect  can  you  find  peace.  And 
what  is  true  of  going  through  the  woods  with  a 
friend,  is  true  also  of  going  through  the  world  w^th 
your  wealth,  with  your  conscience,  with  nature, 
with  duty,  with  pleasure,  and  with  the  constant 
presence  of  God. 

Let  us  count  this,  then,  our  definition  of  Peace.  It 
is  harmonious  relation  with  our  surroundings,  and 
evidently,  then.  Peace  will  become  a  deeper  and  deeper 
word,  a  deeper  and  deeper  thing  to  men  as  they  be- 
come aware  more  and  more  of  what  their  surround- 
ings are,  as  they  open  their  eyes  to  more  and  more 
intimate  and  sacred  things  with  which  they  have  to 
do.  And  so  the  opposite  of  Peace,  namely,  disquiet, 
unrest,  will  also  become  more  and  more  real  to  a  man 
as  he  comes  to  the  knowledge  of  his  circumstances, 
of  the  beings  and  powers  which  surround  his  life 
with  which  he  ought  to  be  in  harmony,  but  which  he 
is  either  ignoring  altogether,  or  to  which  he  is  relating 
himself  wrongly.  Let  us  see  a  little  what  the  deep- 
ening degrees  of  such  disquiet  in  a  man's  life  are. 
And,  first,  most  patent  of  all,  so  that  we  often  get  no 
farther  in  our  use  of  the  word  "Peace  "  than  its  appli- 


192  PEACE  IN  BELIEVING. 

cation  to  that  relationship,  there  is  the  position  in 
which  a  man  stands  to  the  world  about  him  and  to 
his  fellow-men.  There  is  one,  and  only  one,  concep- 
tion of  the  world  in  which  a  man  necessarily  assumes 
a  right  attitude  and  relationship  to  his  fellow-men.  It 
is  that  conception  which  thinks  of  the  Avhole  world  as 
God's  Family.  The  instant  that  that  idea  is  pre- 
sented and  comprehended,  peace  looms  up  in  the  dis- 
tance as  a  possibility.  Just  as  fast  and  just  as  far  as 
that  idea  is  realized  in  a  man's  own  life,  lie  comes  to 
be  at  peace  —  a  higii,  pure,  intelligent  peace  —  with 
his  fellow-men ;  not  the  peace  of  compromise  nor  of 
armed  defiance,  but  the  peace  of  clearly  understood 
relationships  and  mutual  love  and  mutual  help.  For 
just  see  how  the  lack  of  peace  shows  itself  in  you  as 
it  concerns  your  fellow-men.  I  take  you  for  the 
average  man,  neither  worse  nor  better.  If  you  are 
like  most  men,  what  is  your  relation  at  this  moment 
to  other  mortals  ?  Well,  there  are  probably  a  few 
some  three  or  four  —  perhaps,  if  you  are  usually 
offensive  or  unfortunate,  a  dozen  —  men  with  whom 
you  have  quarrels,  you  do  not  speak  to  them,  and 
speech  is  the  primary  pledge  of  common  human  brother- 
hood. It  may  be  you  are  all  ready  to  do  them 
an  injury  if  the  chance  offers,  or,  if  it  is  not  as  bad  as 
that,  you  never  count  them  in  the  number  of  those 
to  whom  you  can  do  any  good  ;  and,  if  we  think  of 
it,  it  is  a  dreadful  thing  that  almost  all  of  us  should 
have  some  such  little  fragment,  reprobate  from  any 
grace  of  ours,  cut  out  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  human 
race.  And  then,  besides  these  men  with  whom  you 
quarrel,  there  is  the  vast  multitude  to  whom  you  are 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVING.  193 

entirely  indifferent,  with  whom  you  think  that  you 
have  no  concern  whatever.  And  next  to  them,  an- 
other company  whom  you  are  always  trying  to  out- 
strip and  get  the  better  of,  people  whom  you  count 
your  inferiors,  on  whom  you  impose  your  will,  whom 
you  domineer  over  if  you  can.  And  next  to  those, 
another  company  to  whom  you  truckle,  whose  author- 
ity and  domination  you  accept,  before  whom  you 
are  servile.  And  then,  besides  these,  smaller  groups 
towards  whom  you  hold  still  other  unworthy  rela- 
tions. There  are  children  whom  you  treat  as  toys. 
There  are  good  men  whom  you  dread  as  bores. 
There  are  false  men  whom  you  admire  as  heroes. 
Now,  sum  all  these  up,  and  then  remember  that  Peace 
consists  in  just  and  harmonious  relations  to  our  sur- 
roundings, and  then  ask  yourself  whether  you  are,  in 
any  true,  high  sense,  at  peace  with  your  fellow-men. 
You  see  that  it  is  not  by  any  means  the  mere  amount 
of  declared  war.  Out  of  policy,  or  out  of  good-nature, 
you  may  have  kept  clear  of  that  entirely.  But  it  is 
the  false  adjustments,  it  is  the  untrue  relationship,  in 
which  you  stand  to  them  that  make  the  absence  of 
peace  between  your  life  and  theirs. 

And  all  that  I  have  said  about  our  relations  to 
other  men  might  be  said  in  a  true  sense  of  our 
relation  to  all  the  external  world  —  to  nature,  to  the 
physical  forces,  to  the  social  laws,  to  everything  not 
ourselves  on  which  our  lives  act,  and  which  acts  on 
them. 

But  the  next  step  takes  us  to  ourselves.  It  is 
only  the  most  superficial  people  that  recognize 
merely  their  relations  of  peace  or  discord  with  the 


194  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

external  world,  and  never  ask  whether  they  are  at 
peace  with  themselves.  To  be  at  peace  with  a  man's 
own  self  !  We  use  the  phrase ;  we  think  we  under- 
stand it.  There  are  certain  comfortable  and  satis- 
fied conditions  in  which  we  think  we  have  attained 
the  thing.  But  we  do  not  really  understand  it  till 
we  have  got  this  fundamental  idea  of  what  peace  is, 
the  harmony  of  a  being  with  its  surroundings.  Now, 
every  man  has  these  two  parts  in  him  :  a  will  en- 
circled by  its  cabinet  or  council  of  affections,  and  a 
system  of  powers  which  that  will  governs.  The  true 
relation  between  the  will  and  the  powers  constitutes 
the  true  peace  of  the  life.  Will  using  powers  to 
their  best  capacity.  Powers  supplying  will  with  all 
the  instruments  it  needs.  Now  turn  again,  and  look 
at  your  own  life.  Are  you  at  peace  with  yourself? 
If  your  will  is  taking  your  powers,  which  were  made 
to  do  noble  and  gentle  and  generous  things,  and 
forcing  them  to  do  sordid  and  brutal  and  mean 
things  ;  if  you  are  living  a  life  of  miserable  drudgery, 
treating  yourself  like  a  machine  ;  or  if  you  are  living 
a  life  of  dissipation,  treating  yourself  like  a  brute, 
then  you  are  not  at  peace  with  yourself  surely. 
Yourself  is  misusing,  is  abusing  yourself.  There 
is  war  between  your  will  and  your  powers,  as 
there  is  war  between  the  harp  and  the  hand  that 
smites  discord  from  its  tortured  strings.  A  man  is 
both  harp  and  harper.  The  harp  may  not  complain, 
but  all  the  time  the  music  it  was  meant  to  make  sleeps 
in  its  strings,  and  it  cannot  be  at  peace  with  the 
cruel  fingers  that  make  it  unmusical.  And  in  your 
powers  sleeps  the  nobleness  that  they  were  made  to 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVING.  196 

do,  in  everlasting  protest  against  the  wickedness  to 
which  you  compel  them.  O  my  dear  friends,  to  be 
at  peace  with  ourselves  is  not  to  loosely  approve 
ourselves  in  what  we  are.  It  is  to  work  with  our- 
selves, that  we  may  be  all  that  God  made  us  for. 

Evidently  it  is  a  great  deal  deeper  discord  when 
a  man  is  not  at  peace  with  himself  than  when  he  is 
not  at  peace  with  his  brethren.  But  there  is  some- 
thing deeper,  something  nearer  to  us  even  than  our 
brethren  or  ourselves.  And  that  is  God.  The  will 
of  God,  which  is  the  law  of  holiness,  is  the  deepest 
and  inmost  thing  of  all  this  world.  And  the  ulti- 
mate question  of  every  human  life  is,  whether  he  is 
at  Peace  with  God.  Once  more  remember  what 
Peace  is.  It  is  the  being  rightly  and  harmoniously 
related  with  that  with  which  we  have  to  do.  Now, 
ttie  only  right  relation  of  man  to  the  will  of  God 
B  loving  obedience,  affectionate  and  happy  loyalty. 
"What  then  ?  If  you  are  simply  ignoring  God  alto- 
gether, living  as  if  there  were  no  God,  you  are  not 
at  peace  with  Him.  Or  if  you  are  absolutely  defying 
Him,  doing  what  you  know  is  wrong,  what  you 
know  He  hates,  then  certainly  you  are  not  at  peace 
with  Him.  Or  yet  again,  remember  this,  if  you  are 
serving  Him  in  mere  slavery,  doing  His  will  simply 
because  you  must,  disHking  it,  disliking  Him  all  the 
time  you  do  it  —  in  either  case  you  are  not  at  peace 
with  God.  Here  we  have  reached  the  bottom  of 
Peacelessness.  Indeed,  this  discord  must  include  all 
others.  For  this  discord,  in  one  word,  is  sin,  and  I 
think  we  can  see  at  once  how  inclusive  it  makes  sin. 
It  compels  it  at  once  to  be  large  enough  to  embrace 


196  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

the  neglect  of  God  ;  not  simply  the  xdolatiou  of  His 
commandments  by  positive  disobedience,  but  the 
absence  of  any  thought  about  Him,  the  absolutely 
worldly  life  which  tries  to  satisfy  itself  without  Him ; 
all  this  evidently  is  a  discord  which  makes  sin,  if 
peace  be  really  the  completeness  of  harmonious  rela- 
tions. Are  you  at  peace  with  God  ?  The  question 
comes  to  some  man  living  his  ordinary  worldly  life, 
and  he  looks  up  and  answers,  "  Yes  ;  I  pay  Him  rev- 
erence ;  I  never  blaspheme  His  name ;  sometimes  I 
try  to  pray  to  Him  a  little,  and  I  hope  that  He  will 
take  care  of  me  when  I  die.  Surely  I  am  at  peace 
with  Him."  But  are  you  really,  if  peace  means 
nothing  less  than  the  existence  between  your  life 
and  His  of  all  the  relations  and  affections  which 
ought  to  be  between  the  infinite  Father  and  His 
child?  Are  you  really  at  peace  with  Him,  if  peace 
means  loving  loyalty  ? 

And  then,  add  one  thought  more.  Remember  how 
no  sin  belongs  entirely  to  the  moment  that  commits 
it ;  remember,  what  you  will  only  need  to  look  into 
your  own  history  to  know  is  true,  how  sin  clings  to 
the  nature  that  has  done  it,  and  lays  itself  like  a 
shadow  between  the  soul  that  sinned  and  the  God 
against  whom  the  sin  was  done.  Remember  this,  and 
then  not  only  the  sin  which  you  are  doing  now  meas- 
ures the  discord  between  your  soul  and  God  —  all 
that  you  have  ever  done,  all  your  past  comes  in.  By 
all  that  you  are  shut  out  from  peace  with  Him.  Your 
relations  to  His  life  to-day  are  broken  and  distracted 
because  of  all  that  you  have  done,  of  neglect  or 
disobedience,  in  all  these  accumulated  years. 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVING.  197 

And  now  look  over  this  account.  Is  there  not 
something  very  terrible  in  seeing  where  we  stand? 
A  man,  a  soul,  a  will  set  here  in  the  midst  of  forces 
which  are  touching  it  on  every  side,  with  all  of  which 
it  might  relate  itself  nobly  and  to  beautiful  results ! 
And  see  what  is  the  case  !  Out  of  our  neighbors  we 
are  getting  never  the  best,  —  often  the  very  worst ; 
ourselves  we  are  dishonoring,  misusing  ;  the  Will  of 
God  we  are  neglecting  or  disobeying.  There,  in  those 
deep  disturbances,  lie  the  real  discords,  the  real 
tragedies  of  life.  Not  in  the  mere  discontent  and 
chaffing,  not  in  the  querulousness  and  restlessness, 
the  envying,  the  perpetual  wish  to  be  away  from 
where  we  are,  to  be  somewhere,  something  else.  Not 
in  these  is  the  deepest,  saddest  essence  of  our  lack  of 
Peace.  These  are  only  the  symptoms.  The  real 
wretchedness  is  in  the  essential  wrong  relations  in 
which  we  have  set  ourselves  to  fellow-man  and  our- 
selves and  God.  The  true  picture  of  Peace  is  simply 
the  restoral  of  true  relations,  so  that  each  soul  of 
us  should  give  its  full  due  to,  and  so  get  its  fidl  due 
from,  the  souls  around  it,  and  its  own  self,  and  the 
soul  of  God,  its  Father. 

And  now,  with  this  conception  of  Peace  clearly 
before  us,  let  us  go  on  to  what  is  always  the  next 
question.  How  can  this  condition,  so  precious  in 
itself,  be  won  ?  How  can  all  things  be  brought  to 
such  a  state  that  they  shall  do  their  best  and  most 
harmonious  work  in  the  fulfilment  of  their  truest  re- 
lations to  themselves  and  to  each  other  ?  And  one 
answer  immediately  suggests  itself,  which  I  think  we 
shall  find  to  fall  in  with  St.  Paul's  verse  which  is  our 


198  PEACE  IN  BELIEVING. 

text.  As  soon  as  we  come  to  any  thoughtful  exami- 
nation of  the  world  we  find  that  everything  is  finite 
and  limited,  and  lives  at  its  best  only  in  relation  to 
other  things.  Everything  is  a  part,  nothing  is  com- 
plete and  absolutely  a  whole.  And  it  is  only  in  rec- 
ognition of  this  fact,  only  in  counting  itself  a  part, 
only  by  living  along  with  the  other  parts,  within  the 
embrace  and  envelopment  of  the  whole,  that  every- 
thing does  its  best  work  and  so  attains  its  best  peace. 
This  is  a  universal  principle.  Everything  falls  into 
disorder,  runs  wild,  loses  its  symmetry  and  its  effec- 
tiveness, unless  it  feels  around  it,  as  it  lives  and 
works,  the  embrace  and  restraint  and  protection  of 
the  controlling  whole  of  which  it  is  a  portion.  And 
peace  for  finite  creatures  only  comes  by  such  envel- 
opment. The  illustrations  of  this  are  numberless. 
The  peace  of  the  family  consists  in  the  envelopment 
of  the  household  by  the  father's  life.  Each  child's 
life  finds  its  place  and  plays  its  part  within  the  girdle 
of  that  authority  and  love.  The  father,  in  the  old 
Saxon  phrase,  is  the  "  husband,"  the  "  houseband," 
that  holds  the  parts  in  their  places,  and  makes  each 
keep  its  true  relation  to  itself  and  to  the  rest.  And 
so  the  work  of  all  goes  on,  and  Peace  is  within  the 
happy  walls.  And  so  a  man's  life  grows  peaceful 
and  effective  when  it  has  some  great  controlling  idea 
which  is  bound  about  it,  as  it  were,  to  keep  each  ac- 
tion and  thought  in  its  place,  in  true  subjection  and 
relation  to  other  thoughts  and  actions.  Within  such 
an  enveloping  idea  no  upstart  action  or  thought 
makes  confusion  by  trying  to  lord  it  over  the  rest ; 
each  tries  only  to  help  fulfil  that  which  is  the  great 


PEACE  IN   BELIEVING.  199 

purpose  of  the  living,  and  so  the  Peace  of  the  natural 
world  is  preserved  by  the  harmonious  working  of  all 
its  laws  within  that  one  great  mysterious  enveloping 
whole  which  is  so  real  to  us  that  we  give  it  a  name 
and  call  it  nature.  All  our  science,  finding  unity  and 
simplicity  of  force  everywhere,  is  making  that  exist- 
ence, that  being  nature,  more  and  more  real,  contin- 
ually. So  everywhere.  A  picture  has  peace  when  all 
its  details  are  harmonized  and  held  within  some  dom- 
inant idea.  A  story  has  its  prevalent  purpose  ;  a 
piece  of  music  its  controlling  theme  ;  a  government 
its  policy.  Everything,  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  part,  is  held 
in  safety  and  given  the  chance  to  do  its  best  work 
only  as  it  is  included  within  some  greater  whole. 
That  whole  in  its  time  becomes  a  part  in  some  whole 
that  is  larger  still ;  and  so  out  to  the  infinite,  which 
nothing  can  limit  or  contain,  this  system  of  envelop- 
ment goes  on.  I  want  to  state  it  just  as  generally  as 
I  can,  because  I  want  to  show  that  St.  Paul's  special 
statement  of  a  special  Christian  truth  is  part  of  a 
universal  law  which  runs  everywhere.  All  Christian 
truth  is  in  harmony  with,  is  but  one  utterance,  is  the 
highest  and  fullest  announcement  of,  the  universal 
truth,  the  truth  of  the  universe.  And  so  the  broad- 
est statement  of  St  Paul's  utterance  here  is  this  : 
that  everything  lives  its  full  life  and  does  its  full 
work,  or,  in  other  words,  completes  that  condition  of 
absolutely  perfect  relationships  which  we  saw  was 
what  Peace  meant,  only  as  it  lives  and  works  within 
the  compass  of  something  greater  than  itself,  which 
holds  each  part  into  its  place,  and  to  which  each  part 
must  be  loyal,  obedient,  and  true. 


200  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

Just  for  one  moment  pause  and  think  of  that  great 
idea  of  Peace  by  Envelopment.  It  has  no  end  or  limit 
until  we  come  to  God.  The  prerogative,  the  distinc- 
tion of  the  divine  life  is  tliis,  that  it,  and  it  alone,  is 
self-enveloping.  There  is  nothing  beyond  it.  It  is 
held  within  nothing.  It  holds  all  things  within 
itself.  There  is  nothing  to  which  God  is  bound  to 
be  true  but  God.  "  Because  He  could  swear  by  no 
greater,"  the  epistle  says,  "  He  sware  by  His  own 
self."  Included  within  His  life  there  lie  first  the 
great  primary  ideas  which  are  forever  true  in  Him. 
Within  these  ideas,  loyal  to  them,  only  powerful  as 
they  embody  and  enforce  them,  lie  the  laws  which 
all  men  own.  Within  these  laws,  held  into  peace 
and  power  by  obedience  to  them,  are  all  the  positive 
institutions  of  mankind,  the  family,  the  state,  the 
church.  Within  these  institutions  live  the  lives  of 
men,  harmonious  and  effective  just  in  proportion  as 
they  perceive  and  cordially  acknowledge  their  envel- 
opment. And  then,  these  lives  again  envelop  one 
another.  Countless  systems  are  formed  and  live 
within  this  great  system.  The  larger  the  envelop- 
ment that  each  life  is  aware  of,  the  more  effectively 
it  works.  The  greater  its  loyalty  and  trust,  the  more 
true  it  is  to  itself  and  to  all  the  sharers  of  the  same 
envelopment.  Every  harmonious  and  effective  work- 
ing, though  it  may  be  aware  only  of  the  envelop- 
ment that  touches  it  most  immediately,  is  really  held 
within  the  great  all-embracing  envelopment  of  God 
Every  action  is  exalted  to  its  highest  self-conscious- 
ness when  it  feels,  through  all  the  intermediate 
envelopments,  that   outermost   envelopment   of  all, 


PEACE  IN  BELIEVING.  201 

the  holding  of  God,  and  answers  back  to  it,  sending 
through  all  inferior  loyalties  a  last  consummate  loy- 
alty to  Him.  "  In  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being." 

And  now,  what  shall  we  call  this  law, — the  law  that 
every  power  comes  to  its  best  and  most  harmonious 
action  only  within  a  larger  envelopment  to  which  it 
trusts  itself  and  to  which  it  is  loyal  ?  This  faithful- 
ness to  an  enveloping  principle  and  power  —  what  is 
it  really  but  belief  ?  The  child  believes  in  its  father. 
The  life  believes  in  its  idea.  The  law  believes  in  its 
principle.  Everything  lives  and  works  by  believing 
in  something  larger  than  itself,  until  you  come  to 
God.  God  believes  in  Himself.  With  Him  alone,  in 
all  the  universe,  is  self-belief,  the  condition  of  the 
highest  life.  And  so  the  truth  which  I  have  been 
trying  to  state,  a  truth  which  in  some  form  or  other 
breaks  out  everywhere  through  all  the  world,  is  really, 
as  you  see,  the  truth  which  is  wrapt  up  in  St.  Paul's 
phrase,  —  "  Peace  in  Believing."  And  if  the  truth 
which  I  have  tried  to  state  is  true,  there  is  no  peace 
anywhere  in  all  the  world  save  in  believing.  No 
high  complete  acti\dty  of  anything,  no  fulfilment  by 
anything  of  all  its  natural  capacity,  unless  it  is  held 
in  the  hand  of  something  greater  than  itself.  Oh,  the 
disjointed,  distorted  little  bits  of  life  that  such  a 
truth  explains !  All  the  world,  all  the  society  we 
study,  is  fuU  of  little  fragments  of  activity,  little  rest- 
less bits  of  movement  which  vex  us  with  their  cease- 
less action  of  brain  and  hand  and  heart  which  comes 
to  nothing.  Society  and  the  world  often  come  to 
seem  to  us,  I  think,  like  a  watchmaker's  shop  where 


202  PEACE    IN   BELIEVING. 

there  are  small  pieces  of  unattached  clock-work 
lying  scattered  about,  each  running  by  itself,  accom- 
plishing nothing  because  each  is  fastened  to  no 
weight,  which  it  has  to  move,  no  purpose  which  it 
is  trying  to  fulfil.  Clicking  and  clattering,  they  keep 
the  shop  in  a  perpetual  confusion.  There  is  no  peace. 
Mere  motion  with  no  work.  Mere  action  with  no 
unity.  Each  separated  bit  of  machinery  has  no  envel- 
opment, belongs  to  nothing,  believes  in  nothing.  So 
is  it  with  a  multitude  of  lives  among  us.  Active 
from  mere  irrepressible  impulse,  their  action  is  all 
restlessness.  They  belong  to  nothing.  They  believe 
in  nothing.  No  loyalty  to  principle  or  fellow-man  or 
God  envelops  them.  Their  lives  inspire  us  with 
continual  dissatisfaction,  and  they  are  not  satisfied 
with  themselves.  There  is  no  better  thing  to  see 
than  that  which  comes  when  one  of  these  bits  of 
machinery  is  taken  up  and  set  into  its  true  envelop- 
ment. When  a  man's  activity  is  rescued  from  aim- 
lessness  by  learning  some  devotion,  and  the  man, 
beginning  to  believe  in  something,  gains  peace  in 
believing. 

This,  then,  is  the  general  statement  of  our  truth. 
And  now  turn  and  see  what  is  St.  Paul's  peculiar 
Christian  statement  of  it.  His  Peace  in  Believing  is 
to  be  distinctly  a  Peace  by  Gospel  Faith,  by  faith  in 
the  Incarnation  and  Atonement  of  Jesus  Christ.  Is 
this,  then,  something  different  entirely  from  what  we 
have  been  speaking  of?  Surely  not.  It  is  simply 
the  completion  and  consummation  of  them  all. 
Around  a  man's  life  fold  its  various  envelopments. 
The   man's   peace   depends   upon  whether  he   is  in 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVING.  203 

living  and  true  relations  to  all  of  them.  Now,  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  is  simply  the  perfect  presentation 
of  all  these  envelopments  to  the  soul  of  man ;  and  he 
who  is  in  the  power  of  the  Gospel,  he  who  approaches 
everything  with  which  he  has  to  do  in  Christ,  finds 
his  true  relation  to  everything.  Shall  we  trace  tliis 
out?  Shall  we  look  one  moment  in  this  new  light 
at  the  different  departments  in  which  we  saw  that 
the  peace  or  the  peacelessness  of  human  lives  resided? 
Peace  with  our  fellow-men.  How  will  that  come 
about  by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ  ?  If  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  perfect  humanity,  the  consummation  of  all  human 
hopes  and  desires,  the  visible  achievement  of  that 
perfection  to  which  all  our  brethren's  lives  are  strug- 
gling, then  must  not  he  who  sees  his  brethren  not  in 
themselves,  not  as  if  this  which  they  are  now  were 
the  end  and  crown  of  all  that  they  could  be,  but  in 
Him,  in  Christ,  reading  their  possibility  in  His  com- 
plete attainment  —  must  not  such  a  man  be  filled 
with  Pity  and  with  Hope  and  with  Respect  for  the 
greatest  and  for  the  most  insignificant  of  men?  And 
these  three  are  the  elements  of  peace.  Let  me  be  a 
thorough  believer  in  Jesus  Christ,  let  me,  that  is, 
have  taken  Him  with  all  the  revelation  of  humanity 
that  there  is  in  Him,  and  where  is  the  fellow-man 
with  whom  I  shall  not  be  at  peace  ?  Is  it  the  man 
who  domineers  over  me  and  bullies  me?  The 
supreme  mastery  of  my  Lord  adjusts  these  lower 
masteries  and  compels  them  to  keep  their  proper 
places.  When  I  have  learned  really  to  "  fear  Him 
who  can  cast  both  soul  and  body  into  hell,"  I  am 
able   indeed   not   to  "fear  them   that   can   kill   the 


204  PEACE   IN   BELIEVING. 

body."  The  martyr  seeing  Christ  standing  at  the 
right  hand  of  God  is  at  full  peace  with  his  mur- 
derers. Is  it  the  man  who  vexes  me  with  his 
stupidity,  whose  awkwardness  and  spiritual  sloth 
seem  even  to  be  hindering  the  salvation  of  the  world  ? 
If  I  believe  in  Christ,  the  possibility  of  that  man 
opens  before  me.  He  is  a  child  of  God.  Pity,  en- 
thusiastic desire  to  waken  him  and  call  him  to  the 
knowledge  and  use  of  his  sonship.  These  may  fill 
me,  but  I  can  have  none  of  that  petty  personal  irrita- 
tion which  is  the  destruction  of  peace.  No  ;  there  is 
no  one  to  whom  a  true  faith  in  the  divine  humanity 
of  the  Redeemer  does  not  adjust  my  life,  calling  out 
my  best  power  of  appreciation,  and  my  best  power 
of  help,  bringing  me  Peace. 

And  then,  my  discord  with  myself.  It  is  as  old  as 
that  wonderful  story  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans.  The  way  in  which  a  Belief 
in  Christ  harmonizes  that  struggle  of  the  two  wills 
which  makes  our  inner  peacelessness.  Deeper  than 
every  revelation  that  Christ  gives  me  about  these, 
my  brother  men  being  God's  children,  is  His  revela- 
tion to  me  that  I  am  the  Child  of  God.  When  He 
has  shown  me  that,  then  I  know  which  of  these  two 
wills  in  me  is  master.  The  other  will  is  not  killed 
out.  It  lives,  but  it  is  conquered.  And  just  as 
there  was  peace  in  the  land  as  soon  as  the  Rebellion 
was  crushed  and  the  power  of  the  rightful  govern- 
ment everywhere  established,  even  though  still 
rebellious  outbreaks  here  and  there  showed  that  the 
old  fire  was  not  totally  extinguished,  so  there  is 
peace  in  me  when  the  divine  Christ  has  become  my 


PEACE   IN   BELIEVING.  205 

master  and  is  strengthening  my  love  of  right  every 
day  with  His  imparted  righteousness ;  even  though 
still  the  evil  wishes  haunt  the  dark  places  and  break 
out  from  the  outward  thickets  of  my  soul.  The 
peace  of  a  man  with  his  own  self  when  his  sonship 
to  God  is  perfectly  established  as  the  fact,  and  his 
return  to  his  Father  is  perfectly  established  as  the 
law  of  his  life  by  faith  in  Christ  the  Son  of  God! 
Why,  here  in  our  country  there  has  been  a  poor, 
unhappy  father  whose  child  was  stolen  from  him 
years  ago,  as  all  the  land  has  heard  with  a  heart  full 
of  sympathy.  Think  of  that  child  wherever  he  may 
be,  if  he  is  still  alive  to-day !  Think  of  the  restless- 
ness in  his  young  heart !  Think  of  the  dim  and 
dying  memories  in  conflict  with  the  things  that  are 
around  him  day  by  day  !  Think  how,  while  others 
can  find  perfect  satisfaction  in  the  life  he  leads, 
because  they  never  have  known  any  other,  down  at 
the  bottom  of  his  heart  there  is  perpetual  unrest ! 
And  now  suppose  the  father  finds  his  child.  The 
house  is  open — the  home-life  folds  itself  around 
him.  Where  is  the  unrest  then  ?  Still  this  strange 
exile  haunts  him  with  its  memories  and  its  power. 
But  the  dominion  of  the  life  is  fixed  again  where  it 
belongs,  and  held  in  the  hand  of  that  dominion,  the 
jarred  and  disordered  activities  of  heart  and  mind 
and  outward  habit  begin  to  beat  again  truly,  and 
once  more  there  is  Peace. 

I  need  not  stop,  as  certainly  I  must  not  stop,  to 
tell  how  the  third  element  of  perfect  peace,  peace 
with  the  law  of  God,  comes  by  the  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ.     One  of  the  words  which  we  make  far  too 


206  PEACE  IN   BELIEVING. 

little  is  that  great  word  "forgiveness."  It  means 
more  than  the  mere  taking  off  of  penalties.  It  means 
the  putting  of  the  soul  where  penalty  cannot  find  it 
any  longer,  in  the  restored  fatherhood  of  God.  To 
the  soul  so  brought  back  what  is  the  relation  between 
it  and  the  law  of  that  fatherhood,  the  law  of  the 
household  of  God  which  is  to  be  his  home  henceforth  ? 
Hear  David  cry,  "  Oh,  how  I  love  thy  law ! "  and  as 
to  the  restored  child  the  house  is  always  tenfold 
dear  because  of  the  exile  in  which  he  used  to  live, 
so  to  the  forgiven  soul  the  law  which  he  obeys  is 
always  more  precious,  and  the  joy  of  obeying  it  more 
deep,  because  of  the  exile  of  disobedience  in  which 
he  lived,  and  from  which  he  has  been  brought  back 
by  grace.  "  Oh,  how  I  love  thy  law ! "  for  to  the 
soul  which  knows  God  in  Christ  the  law  of  God  is 
the  utterance  of  God,  is  God,  and  obedience  is  not 
only  duty  —  it  is  love. 

I  must  not  dwell  on  all  this  any  longer.  Let  the 
great  truth  be  clear  to  us  to-day.  Peace  comes  by 
belief ;  not  by  ourselves  or  our  own  strength,  but  by 
being  held  in  the  hand  of  Him  who  saved  us,  do  these 
disturbed  natures  of  ours  come  to  their  true  selves 
and  work  harmoniously  and  to  their  best  results. 
Doubt  finds  its  only  rest  in  personal  confidence. 
Self-conceit,  which  is  the  most  peace-destroying  thing 
in  all  the  world,  is  overwhelmed  in  consecration  to 
the  Master,  and  contrition  starts  from  the  dust,  and 
turns  into  the  very  angel  of  hope  and  growth  when 
once  a  soul  believes  in  Jesus  Christ. 

Oh,  then,  that  over  us,  perplexed  and  troubled  and 
afraid,  as  over  the  disciples   in  the   chamber  long 


PEACE  IN   BELIEVING.  207 

ago,  the  hand  of  Jesus  might  be  stretched,  and  we, 
to-day,  might  hear  Him  saying,  "  Peace  I  leave  with 
you ;  My  Peace  I  give  unto  you.  Believe  in  Me." 
Oh  that  our  souls  may  say,  "  Dear  Lord,  we  do 
believe  in  Thee,  and  so  we  claim  Thy  Peace." 


XII. 

WHOLE   VIEWS   OF  LIFE. 

"  And  Balak  said  unto  him,  Come,  I  pray  thee,  with  me  unto  an- 
other place,  from  whence  thou  mayest  see  them.  Thou  shalt  see 
but  the  utmost  part  of  them,  and  shalt  not  see  them  all :  and  curse 
me  them  from  thence." —  Numbers  xadii :  13. 

Many  of  you  will  recall  the  story  from  which 
these  words  are  taken,  and  the  striking  picture 
which  it  draws.  The  Israelites  are  travelling  through 
the  desert.  They  are  approaching  the  domain  of 
Balak,  King  of  Moab.  Balak  is  frightened,  and  sends 
for  the  Mesopotamian  wizard,  Balaam,  and  bids 
him  curse  the  dangerous  intruders.  But  Balaam, 
filled  with  a  higher  spirit  than  he  understands, 
blesses  instead  of  cursing.  Again  the  effort  is  made 
and  the  disappointment  follows  in  another  place. 
And  then  it  is  that  there  occurs  to  the  monarch  the 
idea  which  is  recorded  in  the  text.  Perhaps  if  the 
prophet  did  not  see  the  whole  host  in  its  multitude 
the  curse  would  come  more  readily.  "  Let  us  stand 
where  we  can  only  see  a  part  of  them,"  he  says. 
"  Peradventure  thou  canst  curse  me  them  from 
thence." 

It  was  a  vain  expedient.  The  blessing  came  still 
pouring  forth  more  richly  than  before.  Why  should 
it  not  ?  It  was  not  the  quantity  but  the  quality  of 
Israel  which  drew  the  blessing.     It  was  not  because 


WHOLE  VIEWS  OF  lifp:.  209 

there  were  so  many  of  them,  but  because  they  were 
set  on  lofty  purposes  and  carried  in  their  bosom 
mighty  spiritual  issues,  that  God  took  care  of  them 
and  made  them  strong.  It  was  a  hopeless  hope  of 
Balak.  And  it  was  like  a  child.  It  was  the  trans- 
parent self-cheat  of  infancy.  So  children  play  with 
themselves  and  one  another,  saying,  "  Let  us  see  only 
a  part  and  make  believe  that  that  is  all." 

It  is  this  childlikeness,  this  primitive  simplicity 
about  the  incident,  which  makes  it  capable  of  being 
expanded  and  of  applying  to  all  life.  The  wisdoms 
and  policies  of  childhood  find  their  illustrations 
everywhere.  They  are  so  simple  that  they  fit  on 
every  life.  A  child  says  a  wise  word,  and  the  sage 
catches  surprised  sight  in  it  of  complication  sin  his 
life  of  which  the  little  head  has  never  dreamed.  A 
child  does  some  act  of  transparent  folly,  and  by  it 
you  easily  understand  the  elaborate  superstition  or 
the  intricate  villany  of  the  full-grown  conspirator  or 
bigot.  The  children  go  about  with  the  keys  of  our 
conditions  in  their  hands.  They  hold  them  up  before 
us,  and  we  take  them  and  unlock  our  problems  9,nd 
give  them  back  again,  and  the  children  know  noth- 
ing of  what  they  have  done. 

So  is  it  with  this  childish  act  of  the  barbarian 
Balak  —  so  fresh  and  simple  is  it  that  I  feel  sure  I 
shall  not  fail  to  find  the  repetitions  of  it  everywhere. 
And  I  do  !  It  is  about  its  repetitions  that  I  want  to 
talk  this  morning.  I  would  speak  about  the  modern 
Balaks,  who  think  they  can  indulge  their  passions  and 
scatter  their  curses  as  they  please,  by  shutting  their 
eyes  to  all  but  some  small  portion  of  that  with  which 


210  WHOLE   VIEWS   OF  LIFE. 

they  have  to  deal.  They  are  the  men  who  wilfully 
take  partial  views,  who  will  see  nothing  which  will 
interfere  with  that  which  they  have  already  made  up 
their  minds  to  think  or  do  —  especially  the  men  who 
have  made  up  their  minds  to  curse,  and  who  refuse  to 
look  at  that  part  of  a  subject  or  a  life  which  will 
make  cursing  impossible,  and  compel  a  blessing  upon 
that  which  they  choose  to  hate. 

Of  such  a  disposition  —  and  I  am  sure  that  you  rec- 
ognize the  disposition  which  I  mean  —  the  first  thing 
that  impresses  one  is  its  lack  of  absoluteness.  There 
is  an  absolute  truth  about  everything,  something 
which  is  certainly  the  fact  about  that  thing,  entirely 
independent  of  what  you  or  I  or  any  man  may  think 
about  it.  No  man  on  earth  may  know  that  fact 
correctly  —  but  the  fact  exists.  It  lies  behind  all 
blmiders  and  all  partial  knowledges,  a  calm,  sure,  un- 
found  certainty,  like  the  great  sea  beneath  its  waves, 
like  the  great  sky  behind  its  clouds.  God  knows  it. 
It  and  the  possession  of  it  makes  the  eternal  differ- 
ence between  God's  knowledge  and  man's. 

It  is  a  beautiful  and  noble  faith  when  a  man  thus 
believes  in  the  absolute  truth,  unfound,  unfindable 
perhaps  by  man,  and  yet  surely  existent  behind  and 
at  the  heart  of  everything.  It  is  a  terrible  thing 
when  a  man  ceases  to  believe  in  it,  and  ceases  to  seek 
for  it.  He  sinks  out  of  the  highest  delight  and  pur- 
ity. For  him  the  great  glory  of  life  is  gone.  Petty 
and  selfish  economies  sweep  in  and  overwhelm  him. 
Not  what  is  true,  but  what  will  tell  for  the  advantage 
of  something  which  he  thinks  valuable,  becomes  the 
object  of  his   search.     He  questions  everything,   as 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF  LIFE.  211 

the  lawyer  questions  a  witness,  in  the  interest  of  a 
cause.  Then  comes  the  Balak  folly.  Then  the  man 
shuts  his  eyes  to  everything  which  will  not  tell  upon 
his  side.  Then  he  refuses  to  look  upon  the  whole  of 
things,  and  sees  only  the  portion  which  will  minister 
to  his  passion  or  his  spite.  Oh,  keep  your  faith  in, 
your  love  for,  the  absolute,  my  friends  !  Be  sure  that 
it  exists.  To  find  it,  to  come  a  little  nearer  to  find- 
ing it,  — that,  and  not  the  gaining  of  a  new  argument 
or  the  sustaining  of  an  old  prejudice,  is  what  you 
must  be  craving  when  you  seek  for  truth. 

In  the  loss  of  this  faith  lies  the  secret  of  all  parti- 
sanship. The  partisan  always  is  a  Balak.  What  is  a 
partisan  ?  Is  he  not  simply  a  man  who  will  see  only 
a  part  of  truth,  lest  he  should  be  compelled  to  aban- 
don a  position  which  he  loves,  or  to  adopt  a  position 
which  he  chooses  to  dislike  ?  How  many  men  are 
there  to-day  —  Republicans  or  Democrats  or  anything 
beside  —  who  are  genuinely  and  really  as  ready  to 
give  its  full  value  to  a  fact  when,  if  it  is  true,  it  tells 
upon  the  other  party's  side  as  if  it  told  on  theirs  ? 
"  Behold,"  you  say,  "  look  at  the  total  case.  Take 
in  the  entire  situation,  and  then  condemn  this  party 
and  its  leaders  and  its  policies  as  all  foolish  or  all 
false."  Your  friend  looks,  and,  Balaam-like,  to  your 
dismay  he  breaks  out  into  telling  of  the  good  which 
he  sees  even  in  this  party  you  despise.  What  im- 
pulse is  more  natural  than  yours  to  say,  "  Come 
I  pray  thee,  unto  another  place.  Thou  shalt  not 
see  them  all.  Thou  shalt  see  only  that  which  I 
choose  to  let  thee  see  of  them,  and  thou  shalt  curse  me 
them  from  thence."     This  is  not  — he  would  com- 


212  WHOLE  VIEWS   OF  LIFE. 

pletely  misunderstand  what  I  am  saying  who 
thouofht  it  was  —  a  mere  assertion  that  there  is 
good  and  bad  in  everything,  and  the  preaching  of  a 
feeble  vacillation  that  could  never  come  to  any  de- 
cisive action.  There  is  just  the  difference  between 
partisanship  and  reasonable  choice.  The  reasonable 
man  who  has  surveyed  the  whole  condition,  by  and 
by  strikes  his  balance  and  announces  his  result.  He 
finds  that  which  is  genuinely  and  hopelessly  bad,  the 
base,  the  false,  and  the  impure,  and  he  denounces  that 
unsparingly.  Then,  among  honest  and  honorable 
differences,  he  judges  what  he  thinks  comes  nearest 
to  the  absolute  truth,  and  sustains  that  with  all  his 
strength.  But  he  has  no  curse  for  the  man  upon  the 
other  side.  He  will  not  impute  miserable  motives. 
He  is  brave  as  well  as  bold.  He  must  be  just  and 
generous  as  well  as  strong.  And  so  the  policy  which 
he  contends  for  is  in  the  end  not  weaker,  but  stronger, 
for  his  breadth  of  view. 

Away  with  cursing !  Away  with  vehement  de- 
nunciation which  prevents  right  judgment  with  the 
intensity  of  personal  passion  and  dislike !  One  man 
denounces  civilization.  He  sees  the  wretchedness 
and  misery  of  which  its  streets  are  full.  He  hears 
the  cry  of  outraged  natures  and  of  ruined  souls.  He 
says  it  is  an  organized  selfishness,  and  he  curses  it 
with  all  his  heart.  Another  man  denounces  educa- 
tion. He  says  it  is  superficial  and  misplaced.  He  says 
that  instead  of  fitting  children,  it  unfits  them,  for  the 
work  of  life.  He  says  it  makes  cultivated  villains  and 
useless  burdens  on  society ;  and  so  he  curses  education 
very  loudly.     Another  man  denounces  society.     He 


WHOLE   VIEWS    OF   LIFE.  213 

tells  us  how  selfish  and  narrow  and  corrupting  is  the 
intercourse  of  man  with  man.  He  shows  us  the 
social  world  all  honeycombed  with  insincerity.  He 
says,  "•  Is  that  the  way  for  the  children  of  God  to  live 
with  one  another?"  And  so  he  curses  society  and 
turns  ascetic.  Another  man  curses  the  scientific 
spirit.  "  Behold,  how  hard  it  is,"  he  says,  "  how  un- 
believing !  How  arrogant  in  its  self-conceit !  How  it 
would  reduce  life  to  a  desert  and  the  world  to  a 
machine !  How  it  despises  the  spontaneous  affec- 
tions !  How  it  worships  its  idols  !  "  And  his  curses 
fall  upon  it  furious  and  fast. 

Now  notice  that  all  these  accusations  have  their 
truth.  Each  of  these  mighty  and  benignant  interests 
is  guilty  of  the  sin  with  which  it  is  charged.  But  it 
is  only  as  one  shuts  out  all  except  a  little  portion  of 
it  from  his  view  that  any  man  is  able  to  see  each  of 
these  interests  absolutely  given  up  to  its  sin,  so  that 
he  can  curse  it.  In  each  case  if  a  man  takes  into 
view  the  whole  of  civilization  or  education  or  society 
or  science,  he  sees  its  graciousness  and  beauty,  and 
cannot  curse,  but  bless.  And  so  it  is  with  life  in 
general.  There  are  parts  of  it  and  aspects  of  it 
which,  if  they  were  all,  would  make  existence  an 
accursed  thing.  "Come,"  says  the  pessimist,  "you 
shall  not  see  the  whole.  I  will  set  you  where  you 
shall  only  see  a  part,  and  curse  me  it  from  thence." 
There  is  where  pessimism  is  made.  The  man  who 
sees  the  whole  of  life  must  be  an  optimist.  I  know 
dark  points  of  view,  grim  gloomy  crags  of  moral 
vision,  hideous  obsei'vatories  on  \A'hich  if  a  man 
stands  he  can  see  nothing  but  the  dreadful  side  of 


214  WHOLE  VIEWS   OF   LIFE. 

life,  its  wretchedness,  its  disappointment,  its  distress, 
its  reckless,  wanton,  defiant  sin.  I  can  see  gathered 
on  those  horrible  observation  points  the  despisers, 
the  revilers,  the  cursers  of  our  human  life.  I  know 
that  if  I  went  up  there  and  stood  by  their  side,  my 
tongue  would  curse  like  theirs.  But  there  I  will 
not  go.  If  there  be  any  point  whence  I  can  see  it 
all,  however  dimly,  through  whatever  clouds,  there  I 
will  go.  So  will  I  keep  my  faith  that  life  is  good, 
and  work  with  what  strength  I  can  against  its  evils, 
knowing  that  I  work  in  hope. 

Upon  those  dark  places  of  partial  vision  I  know  that 
I  should  never  find  the  great  Seer  of  human  life,  who 
^  Christ.  Christ  saw  all  life  in  God.  That  means 
that  He  saw  life  in  its  completeness.  No  being  ever 
saw  the  evil  and  misery  as  He  beheld  it.  He  saw  sin 
with  all  the  intensity  of  holiness.  But  nobody  ever  has 
dared  call  Jesus  Christ  a  pessimist.  He  saw  the  end 
from  the  beginning.  He  saw  the  depth  from  the  sur- 
face. He  saw  the  light  from  the  darkness.  He  saw 
the  whole  from  the  parts.  Therefore  He  could  not 
despair.  There  was  no  curse  of  life  upon  His  lips. 
Infinite  pity !  A  pity  that  has  folded  itself  around 
the  world's  torn  and  bleeding  heart  like  a  benediction 
ever  since  —  but  no  curse  !  And  who  are  we,  with 
our  little  feeble  rage  and  petulance,  flinging  our  testy 
curses  where  the  Lord's  blessing  descended  like  the 
love  of  God  ?  Oh,  if  you  ever  find  yourself  cursing 
life,  get  your  New  Testament  and  read  what  Jesus 
said  looking  down  on  Jerusalem  from  the  height  of 
the  Mount  of  Olives,  looking  down  on  man  from 
the  measureless  height  of  the  cross ! 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE.  215 

Do  I  talk  too  generally  ?  Let  me  then  illustrate 
and  enforce  all  this  with  instances.  A  man's  career  — 
every  man's  career,  we  may  truly  say  —  is  made  up 
of  struggles  and  victories  or  defeats.  More  defeats 
than  victories  there  are  in  most  men's  lives,  we  think. 
But,  however  that  may  be,  at  least  the  defeats,  the 
weak  and  wretched  failures,  the  troublesome,  exas- 
perating, disappointing  incompetency  for  the  work  of 
life,  force  themselves  most  upon  the  eyes  of  those  who 
watch  their  fellow-men.  And  to  a  very  great  many 
people  there  is  a  continual  temptation  to  ignore  the 
fact  of  struggle  and  remember  only  the  fact  of  defeat. 
It  is  so  satisfactory  to  take  a  simple  sweeping  view 
about  your  neighbor's  life,  to  give  him  one  broad 
judgment  that  has  no  qualifications,  to  trample  on  him 
in  the  gutter  and  never  ask  how  he  got  there.  Then 
you  can  freely  curse.  Then  you  cannot  merely  con- 
demn the  deed,  but  utterly  denounce  the  doer. 

But  men  do  struggle,  even  those  who  fall  at  last 
most  utterly.  It  would  seem  as  if  anybody  needed 
only  to  remember  his  own  history  and  to  study  his 
own  consciousness  to  be  assured  of  that.  You  think 
of  the  days  when  you  have  sinned  most  dreadfully. 
Are  you  willing  to  accept  any  man's  judgment  of  those 
days  who  simply  sees  the  sin.  You  know,  though 
you  dare  not  tell  any  one  besides,  of  how  you  fought 
with  your  temptation.  You  know  the  nights  of  dark- 
ness and  the  days  of  hope.  You  remember  the  mis- 
ery of  the  last  yielding,  and  you  say,  "  He  could  not 
curse  me  if  he  knew  it  all." 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  soul's  appeal  to  God. 
"  Let  my  judgment  come  forth  from  Thy  presence," 


216  WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE. 

David  cries.  Is  it  that  God  does  not  hate  sin  as  man 
does  ?  Certainly  not  that.  It  is  that  God  knows  all. 
The  struggle  and  the  fall  and  the  repentance  all  make 
one  unit  of  experience  to  Him.  Therefore  He  may 
condemn  and  He  may  punish,  but  He  cannot  curse. 

And  when  we  thus  look  at  ourselves  and  into  our 
own  consciousness,  must  we  not  look  abroad  on 
other  men  and  say,  "  No  prejudice  shall  force  or  tempt 
me  to  a  place  where  I  shall  see  only  the  blank  fact 
that  this  man  has  sinned  ?  No  desire  of  my  own  soul 
to  simplify  and  emphasize  his  life  shall  shut  out  of  my 
sight  the  wrestling  before  the  fall,  the  good  which 
pleaded  against  his  resistance,  and  which,  though  out- 
raged and  insulted,  is  in  him  still,  and  will  not  leave 
him  at  peace  in  his  wickedness?" 

There  is  indeed  the  other  vice.  Sometimes  a  man 
insists  that  you  shall  stand  where  you  can  see  nothing 
except  the  good  in  him  with  whom  you  are  to  deal. 
He  insists  on  having  you  make  such  allowance  for  the 
temptation  that  you  shall  disregard  the  sin,  or  having 
you  give  such  value  to  the  struggle  that  the  defeat 
shall  seem  a  small  affair.  That  is  not  what  we  want. 
The  easy  apology  or  even  the  profuse  admiration 
which  may  come  down  from  that  point  of  observation 
is  not  the  true  and  serious  man's  greeting  and  judg- 
ment of  the  life  of  his  brother-man.  It  is  as  foolish 
and  false  as  the  curse,  however  more  generous  and 
kindly  it  may  be. 

Neither  of  these  is  just  and  true,  because  neith'^^ 
of  them  is  complete.  Both  of  them  are  partial.  lii 
is  a  "  blessing "  that  man  wants  to  give  to  man, 
and  the  quality  of  a  true  blessing  is  that  it  is  com- 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE.  217 

plete.  Whenever  man  blesses  his  brother-man,  if  he 
is  doing  the  act  in  all  its  fubiess,  it  is  the  complete- 
ness of  one  nature  taking  in  all  the  completeness  of 
the  other.  Whatever  it  is,  —  the  mother  giving  her 
blessing  to  her  boy  as  he  goes  out  from  the  home- 
gate  into  the  dangerous  world,  the  friend  who  finds  no 
words  of  sympathy  for  his  friend  in  his  great  sorrow 
except  "  God  bless  you,"  the  priest  consecrating  the 
hero  as  he  rushes  to  his  duty  in  the  field,  the  king 
who  looks  across  the  millions  of  his  people  and  pours 
upon  them  all  the  blessing  of  his  kingly  heart,  the 
people  who  set  their  king  or  president  into  his  place 
of  burdensome  honor  with  shouts  of  benediction, 
the  neighbor  who  greets  his  neighbor  with  sacred 
words  which  have  not  lost  their  meaning,  or  the 
children  who  gather  round  their  father's  grave  and 
drop  their  blessings  on  his  dear  memory  along  with 
their  tears,  —  wherever  there  is  real  blessing  there  is 
the  sight  of  the  whole  nature,  there  is  the  compre- 
hension of  the  total  life.  Weaknesses  are  not  forgot- 
ten. It  is  the  remembrance  of  their  presence  which 
makes  the  voice  tremble  as  it  blesses.  Struggle  is 
not  ignored.  It  keeps  the  blessing  hopeful  when  it 
is  trembling  on  the  margin  of  despair.  The  whole 
pathetic  mixture  of  the  human  life  is  gathered  up 
together.  Its  evil  and  its  good  are  both  in  sight. 
The  danger  and  the  possibility,  the  fear  and  the  hope, 
the  darkness  and  the  light,  are  blended  in  one  great 
profound  conception  of  what  this  wonderful  human 
life  is ;  and  when,  standing  where  it  is  all  clear 
before  him,  one  human  being  says  to  another,  "I 
bless  you,"  it  is  the  largest  act  which  man  can  do  to 


218  WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE. 

man.  Rebuke,  and  pity,  and  exhortation,  and  en- 
couragement, and  warning,  and  exaltation,  and  prayer 
—  all  are  in  it.  It  is  soul  meeting  soul  in  the  highest 
region  and  with  the  closest  grasp. 

Jesus  "  led  His  disciples  out  as  far  as  Bethany,  and 
He  lifted  up  His  hands  and  blessed  them."  There 
was  no  curse  on  His  lips  as  He  left  the  poor,  frightened, 
wilful,  ignorant,  and  stumbling  men.  "  He  lifted  up 
His  hands  and  blessed  them."  So  may  the  total  re- 
sult of  the  pressure  of  our  lives  upon  our  brethren's 
lives  be  blessing  !  May  we  see  them  so  largely  that 
a  curse  shall  be  impossible  ! 

I  must  say  a  few  words  upon  two  other  applica- 
tions of  our  truth  that  it  is  the  limited  and  partial 
sight  of  the  things  which  makes  the  curse. 

The  first  of  them  refers  to  the  way  in  which  men 
form  their  judgments  about  religion.  We  listen  to 
the  platform  orator,  we  read  the  novel  of  the  day, 
and  what  impresses  us  is  this :  the  way  in  which  a 
hundred  misconceptions  have  their  origin  in  the  per- 
petual tendency  to  see  a  part  and  not  the  whole,  and 
utter  vehement  and  sometimes  furious  judgments  on 
that  which  finds  its  reasonableness  and  meaning  only 
when  it  is  set  into  the  system  of  which  it  rightly 
makes  a  portion.  Religion  is  the  whole  larger  life  of 
man,  seen  in  the  presence  and  the  light  of  God. 
The  Christian  religion  is  the  life  of  man,  seen  in  the 
broad  illumination  of  the  supreme  and  wondrous 
Christ.  In  Him  it  finds  its  wholeness,  and  its  parts 
grow  into  reconciliation  and  significance. 

Take  for  a  single  instance  what  is  called  the  fact 
of  miracle  ;  not  this  or  that  miraeulous  event,  but  the 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE.  219 

whole  element  of  miracle  as  it  appears  pervading 
everywhere  and  coloring  the  Christian  story.  I  wish 
that  I  could  tell  in  simple  words  how  the  whole 
matter  seems  to  me  to  stand  concerning  miracles. 
"The  trouble  with  miracles  is  that  they  don't 
happen,"  is  the  cry.  And  men  look  up  and  say, 
"  Yes,  that  is  true.  They  do  not  happen.  All  moves 
on  unmiraculously.  We  see  no  wonders."  Is  that 
all  ?  Have  those  eyes,  looking  up,  beheld  the  whole  of 
Christianity?  Have  they  seen  a  Being,  strange, 
unique,  unprecedented,  moving  majestically  among 
men  with  whom  He  certainly  is  one,  and  yet  from 
whom,  both  by  the  words  He  says  about  Himself  and 
by  the  self-witness  which  His  figure  bears,  is  greater 
than  the  men  He  walks  among,  greater  than  any 
man  who  ever  walked  upon  the  earth  ?  Have  they 
seen  Him,  living  His  most  exceptional  and  lofty  life, 
and  then  looked,  ready  for  whatever  they  might 
witness,  to  see  whether  obedient  Nature  had  no 
response  to  make  to  Him  greater  and  richer  than  she 
makes  to  the  long,  crowded  generations  of  ordinary 
human  life  ?  If  not,  is  it  not  right  to  say  that  they 
have  shut  out  a  part,  and  then  judged  of  the  part 
which  still  was  left  as  if  it  were  the  whole  ? 

Here  is  the  true  philosophy  of  miracle.  All  the 
history  of  the  earth  is  full  of  the  record  of  what 
Nature  has  to  say  to  man,  of  what  she  does  and  says 
in  answer  to  his  invitations,  to  his  very  presence  in 
her  courts.  That  is  her  natural  history  as  it  relates 
to  man.  But  what  man  ?  Who  is  he  that  speaks  to 
her  and  whom  she  answers  ?  Is  it  man  in  his  com- 
mon capacity  and  character,  the  ordinary  man,  man 


220  WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE. 

as  lie  has  been  for  ages  ?  For  him  miracles  do  not 
happen.  To  him  Nature  replies  in  the  same  old 
sweet  and  solemn  voices  in  which  for  ages  she  has 
spoken.  But  when  a  new  man  comes,  a  new  man- 
hood, a  divine  man,  his  newness  and  divinity  being 
attested  for  us  not  by  his  miracles,  but  by  his 
character,  then  miracles  do  happen  ;  nay,  more  than 
that,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  miracles  must 
happen,  being  the  natural  outflow  of  his  life  —  being, 
we  almost  may  say,  no  miracles  for  him  —  being 
as  natural  in  the  world  of  power  where  he  lives  as  it 
is  in  our  world  that  the  echo  should  fly  back  from 
the  mountain,  or  the  seed  we  planted  should  come 
piercing  through  the  soil. 

You  must  see  Christ  and  the  tomb,  both  of  them, 
before  it  can  seem  possible  that  Lazarus  will  rise. 
Let  any  one  take  you  where  you  will  see  the  tomb 
only  and  not  see  Christ,  and  you  will  of  course  reject 
the  thought  of  resurrection  and  declare  it  a  supersti- 
tion or  a  fraud.  You  have  got  the  task  without  the 
power,  the  load  without  the  lifting-strength.  Power 
and  task  make  one  great  whole.  They  greet  and 
answer  to  each  other.  Stand  where  you  see  Him,  and 
miracle  is  not  merely  explained  —  it  is  demanded. 
He  is  miraculous,  and  miracle  surrounds  Him  as  the 
sunshine  issues  from  the  sun. 

The  same  is  true  of  many  of  the  questions  of 
religion.  Stand  where  you  cannot  see  man's  great- 
ness, and  the  incarnation  seems  a  wild,  inexplicable 
dream.  Stand  where  no  music  reaches  you  from  the 
deep  harmonies  of  man's  present  spiritual  life,  and 
it  is  out  of  your  power  to  believe  in  heaven.     Lose 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE.  221 

sight  of  sin,  and  the  darker  possibilities  of  eternity 
are  hideous  impossibilities.  The  religious  truth 
which  you  see  by  itself,  out  of  its  position  in  the 
great  whole  which  ought  to  hold  it,  fails  to  bear 
witness  of  its  truth.  Strive  then  for  wholes,  and  let 
the  parts  reveal  themselves  within  them.  Strive  for 
God,  who  is  the  whole.  Not  immediately  for  particu- 
lar religious  doctrines,  but  for  that  vast  religious  and 
divine  conception  of  existence  which  shall  make 
special  religious  doctrines  credible.  By  obedience, 
by  communion,  climb  to  the  height  where  you  shall 
be  with  God,  and  then  the  truths  about  God  shall 
open  their  reasonableness,  their  richness,  and  their 
harmony.  So,  I  think,  Jesus  was  religious.  So  may 
we  be. 

I  must  do  little  more  than  allude  to  the  one  other 
application  of  our  truth  which  is  in  my  mind ;  but  I 
must  not  let  you  go  without  alluding  to  it.  It  is  the 
saddest  and  most  terrible  of  all.  I  am  thinking  of 
the  desperation  and  bitterness  which  come  with  the 
sight  of  pain  without  the  sight  of  the  higher  conse- 
quences and  results  of  pain.  It  is  the  old  tragedy  of 
the  Book  of  Job,  and  of  the  books  of  thousands  of 
tortured  lives.  "  Curse  God  and  die,"  seems  some- 
times to  be  the  only  outcome  of  it  all.  Perhaps,  nay 
almost  certainly,  there  are  some  to  whom  it  seems  so 
here  this  morning.  It  is  the  only  outcome  of  it  all,  if 
the  pain  you  feel  or  see  is  all.  But  if  the  whole  of  a 
man's  life  from  its  beginning  to  its  endless  end,  from 
its  surface  in  to  its  inmost  heart,  is  capable  of  being 
taken  into  account,  then  that  desperate  outcome  is 
not  the  only  one.     There  is  a  blessing  and  a  thank- 


222         ,  WHOLE   VIEWS   OF  LIFE. 

fulness  which  may  overcome  and  drown  the  curse. 
Suppose  that,  looking  at  pain,  and  with  the  curse 
just  growing  into  shape  upon  your  lips,  a  great  hand 
takes  you  up  and  lifts  you.  And  as  you  rise  your 
vision  widens.  And  slowly  education  grows  into 
your  view,  surrounding  pain,  and  drawing  out  its 
sense  of  cruelty,  and  crowding  in  upon  it  its  own 
sense  of  love  and  purpose.  Then,  in  the  larger 
vision,  must  not  the  curse  perish  ?  And  if  the  lips 
are  not  strong  enough  to  open  into  thankfulness,  at 
least  the  eyes,  still  full  of  pity,  may  wait  in  peace. 

This  is  the  fear  we  have  to-day.  The  sense  of 
human  pain  grows  stronger  all  the  time.  And  it 
sometimes  seems  as  if  the  sense  of  purpose  and  edu- 
cation grew  weaker  in  a  multitude  of  souls.  It  is  the 
heart  of  man  taken,  Balaam-like,  to  a  place  whence 
it  can  see  the  part  and  not  the  whole  ;  and  who  that 
listens  does  not  hear  the  muttering  of  the  curse  ? 
Where  is  the  help,  first  for  your  soul,  then  for  the 
whole  great  world  ?  Not  in  saying  that  pain  is  not 
pain,  not  in  shutting  the  eyes  to  the  part  which  is 
so  awfully  manifest,  but  in  seeing,  in  insisting  upon 
seeing,  the  whole. 

"  To  feel,  although  no  tongue  can  prove, 
That  every  cloud  that  spreads  above, 
And  veileth  love,  itself  is  love." 

That  is  the  only  help.  He  who  lets  his  heart  bear 
witness,  he  who  lets  the  experience  of  countless 
sufferers  bear  witness,  he  who  lets  Christ  bear  witness, 
that  no  suffering  ever  yet  came  to  any  human 
creature  by  which  it  was  not  possible  that  that  human 


WHOLE   VIEWS   OF   LIFE.  223 

creature  should  be  made  better  and  purer  and  greater, 
—  he  has  caught  sight  of  the  whole  ;  and  though  he 
walks  in  silence  and  perplexity  and  suspense,  he  does 
not  curse. 

And  so  we  come  to  this,  —  the  sacredness  and 
graciousness  of  the  whole.  He  who  sees  the  part, 
grows  bitter.  He  who  sees  the  whole,  is  full  of  hope. 
We  curse  the  part,  but  not  the  whole.  The  reason 
must  be  that  he  who  grasps  the  whole,  touches  God, 
and  the  human  soul  cannot  really  curse  Him.  The 
whole  is  sacred.  It  is  more  than  the  sum  of  its  parts. 
It  has  its  own  quality  and  character.  It  is  great  and 
mysterious.  In  it  is  peace.  He  who  sees  it  all  finds 
rest  unto  his  soul.  He  who  catches  glimpses  of  how 
he  shall  see  it  all  some  day  has  something  of  the 
power  of  that  rest  already. 

Remember  I  have  not  preached  to  you  blind  satis- 
faction and  complacency.  I  have  tried  to  press  on 
you  the  old  noble  and  ennobling  exhortation,  "  Lift 
up  your  eyes,"  see  all  you  can.  What  you  cannot 
see  with  your  eyes,  see  with  your  faith.  Then  go 
through  life  not  feebly  scattering  curses  by  the  way, 
but  bravely  hopeful,  strong  in  God  whose  being  and 
love  surround  it  all,  blessing  and  being  blessed,  at 
every  step  and  at  the  end. 


xin. 

HIGHER    AND    LOWER    STANDARDS. 

"  Demas  hath  forsaken  me,  having  loved  this  Present  World."  — 
II  Timothy  iv  :  10. 

Of  Demas  we  know  almost  nothing  except  what 
is  suggested  in  these  words.  Once  in  the  Epistle  to 
the  Colossians,  and  once  in  the  Epistle  to  Philemon, 
St.  Paul  alludes  to  him  as  his  own  fellow-worker,  in 
tones  of  sympathy  and  love.  Then  in  the  Epistle  to 
Timothy  there  comes  this  statement  of  his  follower's 
defection. 

With  so  few  facts  to  restrain  us,  we  may  give  some 
play  to  our  imagination.  We  may  ask  ourselves  why 
and  how  it  was  that  Demas  turned  back  from  the 
company  of  Paul,  and  gave  himself  to  "  this  present 
world."  It  may  have  been  mere  lightness  of  nature, 
which  grew  weary  of  the  severe  and  lofty  life  which 
the  apostle  lived.  On  the  other  hand,  there  may 
have  been  something  more  than  that.  Demas  may 
oertainly  have  been  a  man  of  some  degree  of  serious- 
ness. I  can  think  of  him  as  being  first  drawn  to 
Paul  and  Paul's  Christ  with  real  enthusiasm.  His 
heart  was  touched.  His  mind  was  fascinated.  Lo ! 
here  was  something  greater  than  the  ordinary  lifc: 
Here  was  the  true  life  of  man.  I  can  imagine  him 
thinking  that  for  a  long  time,  and  then  I  can  imagine 
a  misgiving  creeping  in  upon   him.     "  After  all,"  I 


HIGHER   AND   LOWER   STANDARDS.  225 

can  picture  him  saying  txD  himseK,  "  what  is  this  life 
of  Paul,  my  master  ?  Is  there  any  hope  that  he  can 
make  the  world  that  which  he  thinks  it  ought  to  be  ? 
Is  he  not  striving  for  an  impossibility?  Is  he  not 
before  his  time  ?  Is  he  not  so  far  apart  from  common 
standards  that  all  his  teaching  and  work  must  be 
only  a  powerless  episode,  out  of  which,  when  it  is 
over,  no  permanent  result  can  come  ?  Will  not  the 
true,  the  healthy,  the  practical  man  rather  seek  the 
best  standards  of  his  time  and  live  in  them?"  With 
thoughts  like  these,  I  can  conceive  this  vague  and 
shadowy  Demas,  by  and  by,  perhaps  with  deep  regret 
and  courteous  farewells,  forsaking  Paul,  his  master, 
"having  loved  this  present  world." 

If  any  such  picture  of  his  history  were  true,  should 
we  not  have  in  Demas  a  very  interesting  study  of  the 
comparative  power  of  Higher  and  Lower  Standards, 
and  of  their  relation  to  one  another  ?  We  should  see 
a  man  pressed  on  by  the  immediate  conditions  of  his 
place  and  time  urged  to  behave  and  live  as  his  con- 
temporaries and  his  fellow-citizens  were  living  and 
behaving ;  then  tempted  out  beyond  these  immediate 
surroundings  by  the  sight  of  vaster  experiences  and 
the  more  ideal  possibilities  of  man ;  and  then  again 
deliberately  leaving  and  disowning  these,  and  coming 
back  and  saying :  "  No  !  Beautiful  as  it  is,  it  is  a  de- 
lusion. Man  must  live  in  his  own  place,  and  in  his 
own  time.  The  universal  and  the  eternal  must  not 
bewilder  him.  He  can  identify  and  integrate  his  life 
only  in  the  moulds  of  his  own  race,  his  own  family, 
his  own  class.  Let  him  find  his  standards  there. 
Let  the  bird  be  the  best  bird,  and  the  mole  the  best 


226  HIGHER  AND  LOWER  STANDARDS. 

mole,  that  it  can  ;  but  let  neither  lose  its  distinctness 
and  special  value  by  aspiring  after  some  vague  dream 
of  universal  animal  life."  This  is  what  we  should  see 
in  Demas  if  our  imagination  concerning  him  were 
right.  And  so  we  should  understand  the  scene  when 
on  some  dim  and  hazy  morning  he  turned  his  back  on 
Paul,  and  went  back  to  the  "  present  world  "  which 
he  loved. 

Was  there  ever  a  restlessness  in  his  soul  after- 
wards ?  Did  the  heaven  which  he  once  had  dared  to 
seek  haunt  him  in  his  lower  life  ?  We  are  almost 
sure  it  must  have  haunted  him,  for  not  by  any  one 
resolution  does  a  man  shut  the  windows  on  the 
higher  standards  which  once  have  shone  upon  him. 
He  cannot  so  look  to  earth  that  he  will  not  be  aware 
of  the  heaven,  any  more  than  he  can  so  fix  his  eyes 
on  the  heaven  that  he  will  not  know  there  is  an 
earth.  An  old  mediaeval  legend  says  that  mankind 
are  the  incorporation,  the  embodiments,  of  the  angels 
who  in  the  strife  between  God  and  Lucifer  could 
not  determine  on  which  side  they  ought  to  be.  They 
never  have  finally  decided.  And  so  this  special 
fallen  angel  Demas  may,  as  well  as  any  other  man, 
give  us  the  starting-point  from  which  to  think  about 
the  true  relation  of  the  higher  and  the  lower,  the 
universal  and  the  special,  standards  to  the  life  of 
man.  That  is  what  I  should  like  to  do  this  morn- 
ing. 

Let  us  start,  then,  with  the  fact  that  every  human 
being  is  born  into  a  group  of  local,  ready-made  stand- 
ards, to  which,  in  the  absence  of  any  broader  and 
more  absolute  ideas  of  life,  he  naturally  and  legiti- 


HIGHER   AND  LOWER   STANDARDS.  227 

mately  conforms.  The  child  takes  it  for  granted 
that  what  his  father  and  his  mother  do  is  right. 
The  ways  of  the  household  represent  for  him  the 
perfect  life.  As  he  goes  forth  from  the  house  door 
into  the  school,  into  the  city  life,  into  the  Church's 
teaching,  it  is  all  right  for  him  that  each  of  them 
should  welcome  him  into  a  set  of  standards  all  formed 
and  accepted,  which  should  be  presumably  the  best. 
He  does  not  know  enough  to  question  them.  The 
presumption  is  enormously  upon  their  side.  The 
very  fact  of  his  being  born  into  the  midst  of  them 
implies  a  certain  kind  of  evidence  that  he  brings 
such  a  nature  as  will  be  best  suited  to  them,  and 
such  as  they  will  best  suit.  They  represent  the  same 
stage  in  the  development  of  man.  And  so  the  child 
in  the  household,  and  the  scholar  in  the  school,  and 
the  citizen  in  the  State,  and  the  Christian  in  the 
Church,  starts  with  a  cordial  acceptance  of  the  local 
standard,  and  desires  to  live  as  other  men  are  liv- 
ing in  the  institution  of  which  he  finds  himself  a 
part. 

In  a  yet  larger  way,  the  same  is  true  about  the  age 
in  which  a  man  finds  himself  set.  I  am  here  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  I  am  presumably  in  its 
spirit,  and  think  it  the  best  century  which  the  world 
has  seen.  The  same  causes  have  produced  it  and 
me  and  the  men  who  are  living  in  it  at  my  side.  I 
see  its  light ;  I  feel  its  nobleness.  Other  centuries 
I  must  go  abroad  to  seek.  This  century  is  here.  I 
breathe  its  breath  ;  its  blood  is  in  my  veins ;  its 
passions  are  my  passions  ;  its  ideas  are  my  ideas. 
And  so  presumptively,  and  by  the  first  natural  dis- 


228  HIGHER   AND   LOWER    STANDARDS. 

position  of  my  life,  I  am  a  man  of  my  time  and 
adopt  its  standards. 

This  is  not  something  which  applies  only  to  weak 
and  waxen  characters,  such  as  easily  take  the  im- 
pression of  their  immediate  surroundings.  Great 
genius  all  the  more  vividly  catches  the  color  of  its 
time.  Plato  is  a  man  of  all  time,  but  he  is  also  a 
man  of  the  fourth  century  before  Christ.  Luther 
is  a  German  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Shakespeare 
is  part  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  Nay,  if  we  come 
to  that  Life  of  which  it  might  have  been  expected 
above  all  others  that  it  would  leave  all  local  and 
temporary  influences  and  associations  on  one  side, 
and  be  simply  and  universally  the  life  of  the  Son 
of  Man,  Christ  Jesus  was  a  Jew ;  He  was  a  Naz- 
arene ;  He  spoke  the  language.  He  thought  the 
thought,  of  His  own  people ;  He  reverenced  the 
authority  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees ;  He  justified 
Himself  out  of  the  Jewish  law.  It  was  not  merely 
a  humanity,  but  a  Hebrew  humanity  of  that  especial 
age,  through  which  He  uttered  the  wisdom  and  the 
love  of  God. 

Influences  are  powerful,  not  merely  in  virtue  of 
their  intrinsic  force,  but  also  in  proportion  to  their 
nearness  or  their  distance.  An  idea  which  ever, 
in  any  remotest  age,  has  held  the  thought  of  men 
is  powerful  forever  in  the  world ;  but  an  idea  of  far 
less  intrinsic  force  prevailing  here  and  now  will  con- 
quer it,  and  sweep  the  life  of  the  world  out  of  its 
power.  A  man  in  college  knows  that  the  stand- 
ards of  the  great  world  of  men  are  wiser,  loftier,  and 
freer  than  those  which  are  the  masters  in  his  little 


HIGHER  AND  LOWER   STANDARDS.  229 

world ;  but  the  immediate  holds  him  in  its  power,  and 
he  thinks  that  he  is  helpless.  It  is  in  vain  to  argue 
with  this  first  power  of  the  present  life.  That  a 
man  should  feel  it,  is  the  first  condition  of  successful 
energy.  Now  and  then  a  man  comes  who  does  not 
feel  it,  or  who  pretends  not  to  feel  it.  "  I  will  not 
be  an  American  of  the  nineteenth  century,"  he  says. 
"  I  will  be  a  Greek  of  the  time  of  Pericles.  I  will 
be  a  Jew  of  the  time  of  Moses.  I  will  be  a  bar- 
barian of  the  forest,  or  an  Arab  of  the  desert." 
And  what  is  the  result  ?  How  he  becomes  useless 
and  insignificant  and  good  for  nothing !  The  great 
age  takes  no  notice  of  the  foreign  particle.  He 
adds  nothing  to  its  force.  He  shares  nothing  of  its 
glory. 

Be  men  of  your  time.  Let  no  perverseness  and 
no  affectation  isolate  you  from  it.  There  is  the  man 
behind  his  time,  and  the  man  before  his  time ;  and 
the  time  gains  something  from  them  both,  but 
neither  of  them  makes  a  true  part  of  its  vital 
strength.  There  is  the  other  man  whom  we  all 
know,  who  stands  with  the  very  genius  of  his  time 
inspiring  his  life.  He  will  stand  always  in  history, 
to  show  what  the  special  humanity  of  this  particular 
period  was.  And  now  the  age  for  which  he  stands 
is  more  real  for  his  characteristic  life,  and  does  its  real 
work,  in  this  brief  day  of  his  existence,  by  him  and 
such  as  he ;  and  he  himself  is  real  and  strong  and 
solid  by  this  identification  with  his  time. 

We  say  all  this  with  confidence,  and  tlien  there 
come  misgivings.  After  all,  will  not  all  this  make 
a  limited  and  meagre  life  ?    Shall  I,  because  I  happen 


230  HIGHER  AND  LOWER   STANDARDS. 

to  have  been  born  in  this  especial  century,  or  because 
I  live  in  this  especial  land,  or  because  I  am  a  mem- 
ber of  this  especial  class  in  college,  accept  the 
standards  of  my  time,  my  place,  my  class,  and  ask 
no  larger  questions  ?  I  cannot,  if  I  am  a  man.  It 
cannot  be  that  it  is  right  that  I  should  do  so.  It  can- 
not be  that  I  am  doomed  to  bigotry  because  I  live 
in  one  place  or  time,  or  to  scepticism  if  I  live  in 
another.  "  That  would  make  me  a  puny  slave,  and 
make  all  progress  of  the  world  impossible."  So  men 
reason,  and  they  reason  well.  Sometimes  they  act 
upon  their  reasoning  very  badly.  Sometimes  the 
only  thing  which  they  can  see  to  do  is  to  throw  them- 
selves violently  outside  their  local  temporary  stand- 
ards and  live  in  pure  defiance  of  the  state  of  things 
about  them,  which  is  nothing  but  another  kind  of 
slavery. 

There  is  a  better  way.  There  is  a  calm,  deliberate 
search  for  other  standards,  which  shall  not  destroy, 
but  ripen  and  enlarge,  the  standards  to  which  we  are 
immediately  committed.  There  is  a  way  in  which, 
still  clinging  to  our  time  and  place,  we  may  fulfil 
their  influence  upon  us  by  more  general  and  more 
personal  influence,  so  that  they  shall  not  hold  us  in 
slavery  and  cramp  us,  but  be  the  starting-point 
for  larger  range  and  deeper  depth.  Let  us  see  what 
such  other  standards  are.  In  general,  I  think  that 
they  are  two,  which  we  may  call : 

First.     The  universal  human  experience ;  and 

Second.     The  personal  conscience. 

Let  us  look  at  both. 

First.     What  do  we  mean,  then,  by  the  universal 


HIGHER  AXD  LOWER   STANDARDS.  231 

human  experience  as  an  enlargement  of  the  stand- 
ards of  our  time  or  place  ?  Why,  this !  Here  you 
and  all  the  people  about  you  are  living  in  a  certain 
fashion.  You  were  born  into  its  ways  of  living,  and 
have  followed  it  ever  since  you  were  a  child.  You 
have  never  seen  any  other.  The  consequence  is, 
you  have  come  to  think  of  it  as  if  it  were  intrin- 
sically the  best  way,  almost  as  if  it  were  the  only 
way.  You  have  practically  come  to  feel  as  if  a  man 
could  not  be  clean  and  upright  and  intelligent  and 
a  gentleman  and  live  in  any  other  way.  Now  sup- 
pose your  range  of  vision  widens,  suppose  3'^ou  come 
to  see  that  there  are  hosts  of  men  who  are  true, 
honest,  pure,  and  fine  who  never  heard  of  your  pet 
ways  of  living.  Suppose  the  curtain  of  history  is 
lifted,  and  you  see  that  whole  generations  wrought 
out  strong,  healthy  human  lives  thinking  things 
wrong  which  you  think  right,  thinking  things  right 
which  you  think  wrong.  What  is  the  result?  You 
do  not  cast  your  standards  instantly  away,  but  you 
revise  them.  Their  tyranny,  their  absoluteness,  is 
mitigated.  You  say,  "They  may  not  be  right." 
You  have  stepped  forth  into  the  presence  of  the 
great  humanity. 

Take  your  religious  opinions.  They  are  heterodox 
or  orthodox,  but  they  are  absolute  to  you  because 
they  are  the  opinions  of  your  place  and  time.  You 
have  so  thoroughly,  so  totally,  accepted  them  that 
you  with  greatest  difficulty  are  able  to  believe  that 
any  man  is  a  good  man  and  a  true  man  who  believes 
that  which  you  disbelieve,  or  disbelieves  that  which 
you  hold  true.     But  lo,   across  the   ocean,   if  not 


232  HIGHER   AND   LOWER   STANDARDS. 

nearer,  there  are  men  who  find  what  you  believe  all 
unbelievable,  and  there  are  men  who  hold  what  is  to 
you  incredible,  with  all  their  hearts,  who  yet  are 
altogether  brave  and  spiritual  and  devout.  What 
shall  that  mean  to  you  ?  It  must  not  make  you 
think  al  truth  indifferent.  It  must  not  give  you 
into  the  power  of  the  silly  idea  that  it  matters  not 
what  a  man  believes.  It  must  not  make  me  doubt 
my  truth,  but  it  must  make  me  hold  my  truth  more 
largely,  and  be  sure  that  there  are  other  aspects  of 
it  which  may  make  good  and  strong  men.  It  must 
make  me  know  the  larger  relations  of  charity  and 
faith. 

Thus  every  conviction  and  conception,  when  it  is 
taken  out  into  the  broad  air  of  human  life,  grows 
clearer  and  grows  truer.  "  I  know  this  because  men 
know  it,"  I  declare.  "  I  am  sure  of  it  because  men 
are  sure  of  it."  But  what  men?  Why,  first  of  all, 
these  sharp,  clear  men  whom  I  meet  every  day,  these 
men  who  must  of  necessity  immediately  represent 
humanity  to  me.  But  what  about  those  other  men 
who  lived  ten  centuries  ago?  What  about  these 
other  men  who  live  to-day  in  China  or  Paris  ?  Shall 
they  have  nothing  to  say  in  forming  my  opinion  ?  If 
I  take  any  conception  of  my  own  and  travel  far  up 
along  the  stream  of  history,  and  there  in  the  far-away 
thickets  where  the  stream  is  very  small  find  men 
holding  the  same  thing  to  be  true  ;  or  if  I  sail  with 
it  across  the  ocean,  and  find  men  of  other  colors  and 
other  tongues  believing  it  and  living  by  it,  —  is  not  my 
faith  in  it  confirmed  ?  Is  not  the  local  temporary  stand- 
ard strengthened  when  the  standards  of  all  time  and 


HIGHER  AND  LOWER   STANDARDS.  233 

all  the  world  gather  around  it  and  agree  with  it? 
Must  it  not  also  be  that  the  local  and  temporary- 
standards  are  regulated  and  enlarged  when  the  stand- 
ards of  other  times  and  of  the  whole  world  show 
that  they  are  not  in  accordance  with  the  great  and 
deliberate  and  long-continued  movements  of  the 
human  mind  and  soul? 

Seeurus  judieat  orhis  terrarum.  The  judgments  of 
the  world  are  right.  What  a  great  power  that  prin- 
ciple has  always  had  over  the  minds  of  men  !  It 
really  is  at  the  heart  of  all  appeals  to  the  judgment- 
seats  of  the  past  or  the  future.  It  is  the  principle 
which,  consecrated,  builds  the  Church.  Under  the 
power  of  this  principle  the  standard  of  the  time,  the 
sect,  the  set,  the  laSid,  is  always  being  drawn  out  for 
refreshment  and  for  enlargement  and  for  rectification 
into  the  long  and  broad  standards  of  humanity.  A  boy 
gets  to  believe,  from  the  society  he  lives  among,  that 
all  bright  men  despise  religion.  He  happens  to  live 
in  a  little  narrow,  local,  temporary  set,  where  clever 
wits  are  sneering  at  the  supreme  divine  relations  of 
the  soul.  He  is  all  ready  to  fix  it  as  one  of  the  first 
conditions  of  his  thought,  that  one  must  be  either 
foolish  or  blind  to  say  that  he  believes  in  God.  Let 
that  poor  boy's  horizon  be  enlarged.  Let  him  see 
ages  filled  with  the  glory  of  religion.  Let  him  be- 
hold multitudes  of  the  world's  noblest  souls  finding 
their  highest  nobleness  in  obedience  to  an  acknowl- 
edged God,  and  is  he  not  set  free  ?  Is  he  not  set  at 
liberty  to  search  and  find  out  for  himself  the  larger 
spiritual  life  of  man  ?  A  certain  sin  is  current  in  a 
certain  land.     The  exact  point  of  development  which 


234  HIGHER  AND  LOWER   STANDARDS. 

that  land  has  reached  tends  to  make  that  sin  seem  ex- 
cusable, perhaps  almost  to  make  it  seem  necessary  A 
man,  full  of  the  sympathy  of  his  time  and  ready  to  ac- 
cept its  standards,  travels  to  other  lauds ;  and  lo,  what- 
ever other  sins  are  tolerated  there,  this  sin  is  counted 
a  disgrace.  Men  turn  away  from  him  who  trans- 
gresses in  this  special  fashion  with  contempt  or  dis- 
gust. Is  not  the  traveller's  spell  broken  ?  Does 
he  not  go  back  to  his  own  land  with  the  standards 
which  it  has  inspired  set  right  and  made  large  by 
what  the  world  has  shown  him?  These  are  illus- 
trations of  what  I  mean  by  the  power  over  local  and 
temporary  standards  of  the  universal  experience  of 
humanity. 

Second.  I  said  that  also  the  local  and  temporary 
standard  was  subject  to  enlargement  and  correction 
by  the  personal  conscience.  At  first  the  group  of 
which  a  human  being  makes  a  part  —  the  family,  the 
school,  the  age  —  overcomes  and  conceals  his  self.  It 
almost  is  his  self.  But  the  true  self  is  there  all  the 
while.  This  is  a  human  being,  different  from  all  the 
other  beings  that  have  ever  lived  or  are  living  on 
the  earth  to-day.  What  is  the  result  of  that  ?  Some 
day  some  decision  which  the  family,  the  school,  the 
church  has  made  is  so  important  or  so  strange  that  it 
breaks  through  the  outer  crust  of  life,  and  finds  this 
true  self,  this  personal  self,  down  below  and  wakens 
it.  And,  once  awake,  it  never  goes  absolutely  to 
sleep  again.  The  man's  own  sense  of  right  and 
wrong,  of  wise  and  foolish,  utters  its  commendations 
or  its  condemnations  on  the  standards  of  the  time  or 
of  the  place ;  and  just  in  proportion  to  the  true  per- 


HIGHER  AND  LOWER   STANDARDS.  235 

sonalness  with  which  he  speaks,  his  utterances  are 
more  large  and  absolute. 

For  it  is  true  that  every  real  man  is  more  eternal 
and  more  universal  than  his  time  and  place.  Every 
real  man  is  fresh  from  the  creative  hand  of  God. 
He  has  not  come  down  simply  through  the  genera- 
tions. He  is  the  son  of  Him  who  was,  and  is,  and  is 
to  be.  Therefore  those  standards,  which  have  in 
them  the  limitations  of  the  time  and  place  where 
they  were  born,  come  to  him  for  their  judgment. 
They  are  the  utterances  of  the  convictions  of  all 
men.  And  there  is  a  true  sense  in  which  every  real 
man  is  wiser,  as  there  is  another  sense  in  which  he  is 
more  foolish,  than  his  race.  At  any  rate,  he  is  re- 
sponsible for  his  own  life.  His  conscience  claims 
this  freedom  and  makes  of  it  a  duty.  "  What  is  this 
world  that  I  should  take  its  judgments  absolutely  ? 
Behold,  my  time  says  that  this  is  right,  but  I,  the 
heart  of  me,  the  conscience  of  me,  know  that  it  is 
wrong.  What  is  the  age  but  multitudes  of  Me's  ? 
Shall  not  this  Me  have  its  own  rights  which  it  can- 
not surrender  ? "  And  so  the  personal  conscience 
revises  and  enlarges  and  corrects  the  standards  which 
the  time  and  place  have  formed. 

The  illustrations  which  I  used  before  might  serve 
us  perfectly  again.  The  boy,  all  ready  to  be  overcome 
by  the  flippant  and  scornful  scepticism  of  his  time, 
hears  the  remonstrance  which  comes  not  merely  from 
the  utmost  bounds  of  human  life,  but  also  up  from  the 
depths  of  his  own  soul.  The  doer  of  the  accepted  sin 
of  the  day  does  it  in  the  face  not  merely  of  a  rebuking 
humanity,  but  also  of  his  own  nature,  which  knows  and 


236  HIGHEK   AND  LOWER   STANDARDS. 

says  that  it  is  wrong.  Thus  the  heart  of  a  man,  which 
is  eternal,  is  always  asserting  the  eternal  standards,  and 
so  intensively  as  well  as  extensively,  in  the  depth  of 
his  personal  conscience  as  well  as  in  the  breadth  of  his 
share  in  the  universal  manhood,  he  is  finding  the  cor- 
rection and  enlargement  of  the  standards  of  his  life. 

Let  us  see,  then,  what  we  have  reached.  Here  is  a 
certain  man,  —  you,  we  will  say,  hving  your  daily 
life.  Where  will  the  standards  of  that  life  come 
from  ?  First  of  all  out  of  your  surroundings.  You 
will  do  what  your  household,  your  class,  your  time, 
your  place  think  right.  But  on  these  standards  will 
be  always  pressing  the  claims  of  the  general  human 
judgments,  what  men  in  other  times  and  in  other 
places  have  thought  and  are  thinking  to  be  right,  and 
the  claims  of  your  own  conscience,  that  which  God  has 
shown  you  to  be  right  in  your  own  soul.  The  result 
will  be  a  character  of  your  own  time,  of  your  own 
place,  and  yet  of  all  times  and  of  all  places,  or  rather 
of  that  universal  being  which  underlies  all  times  and 
all  places  and  manifests  itself  in  each,  but  loses  itself 
in  and  becomes  the  slave  of  none. 

May  I  just  suggest  one  or  two  simple  illustrations 
which  will  make  more  clear  and  less  abstract  what  I 
have  been  saying.  Suppose  a  young  man  born  in  a 
certain  region  of  society  has  adopted  a  certain  scale  of 
personal  expense  without  a  question.  He  is  rich,  and 
all  his  friends  are  rich,  and  luxury  is  in  the  very  air 
they  breathe.  He  really  thinks  that  a  man  cannot 
live  comfortably  on  less  than  he  spends  every  year. 
Is  he  to  be  all  his  life  a  slave  of  those  delusions  just 
because  he  was  born  in  a  particular  street  and  of  a 


HIGHER   AND   LOWER   STANDARDS.  237 

special  class  ?  The  things  which  must  save  him  must 
be  the  widest  sight  of  how  the  noblest  men  on  earth 
are  living  to-day  on  not  more  than  a  tenth  of  what  he 
thinks  necessary,  and  of  how  luxury  has  been  in  ages 
the  curse  of  human  life,  and  the  protest  of  his  own 
conscience  that  wanton  extravagance  in  a  world 
where  men  and  women  are  starving  is  a  sin  and 
shame. 

Here  is  a  community  where  everybody  drinks. 
You  live  in  it,  and  you  drink  too.  Why  should  you 
not?  What  call  or  right  have  you  to  set  yourself  up 
for  an  exception  ?  None,  if  you  get  your  standard 
wholly  from  your  time  ;  but  surely  reason  enough,  if 
all  the  world  and  all  the  ages  speak  to  you  and  tell  you 
how  the  curse  of  drink  is  at  the  root  of  a  large  part  of 
human  misery,  and  that  the  earth  would  almost  burst 
to  blossom  if  the  blight  of  drunkenness  were  taken 
off.  Reason  enough,  if  your  own  conscience  speaks 
to  you  and  tells  you  that  you  have  no  right  to  degrade 
your  own  nature  from  its  best  activity,  or  to  put  one 
grain  more  of  temptation  in  the  way  of  your  hindered 
and  burdened  fellow-men. 

There  are  groups  of  men,  at  least,  who  see  no  harm 
in  gambling.  Has  any  man  a  right  to  shut  his  life 
into  the  standards  of  those  groups  and  give  no  value 
to  the  fact  that  the  great  mass  of  civilized  mankind 
has  thoroughly  believed  and  proclaimed  that  for  a 
man  to  come  into  possession  of  the  property  of  his  fel- 
low-man by  a  process  which  is  neither  bargain  nor 
gift,  but  the  mere  working  of  accident  and  chance^ 
is  demoralizing  and  wrong  ?  Has  any  man  a  right  to 
let  his  soul  be  deafened  to  its  own  instincts,  which  tell 


238  HIGHER  AND  LOWER  STANDARDS. 

it  that  for  a  man  to  gain  money  so  is  wicked  ?  Here 
is  where  the  breaking  of  the  spell  must  come.  Men 
in  all  ages  have  doubted  or  denounced  the  gambler's 
life.  The  gambler's  own  conscience,  if  he  sets  it  free, 
denounces  it.  Before  the  universal  human  experi- 
ence and  the  personal  conscience,  the  standard  of 
the  gaming-house  finds  itself  corrected  and  rebuked. 

I  will  not  multiply  illustrations.  Do  you  not  see 
liow  they  all  point  the  same  way,  how  they  all  tend 
to  urge  the  same  kind  of  life,  —  a  life  profoundly 
rooted  in  the  here  and  now,  a  life  that  is  in  quick  and 
earnest  sympathy  with  what  is  close  about  it,  a  life 
that  altogether  is  disposed  to  think  its  own  time  and 
its  standards  right,  and  yet  a  life  which  is  always  look- 
ing wider  and  looking  deeper,  —  wider  to  the  universal 
experience  of  man,  deeper  to  the  personal  conscience 
which  it  carries  in  itself  ? 

I  appeal  to  you  whether  what  I  have  described  is 
not  the  character,  the  kind  of  man,  whom  the  com- 
munity most  trusts  and  honors,  on  whom  it  most 
learns  to  depend.  The  servant  of  the  hour,  but  not 
its  slave ;  in  sympathy  with  the  day,  the  place,  the 
business,  the  party,  the  circle  of  society  in  which  it 
stands,  but  not  in  blind  subserviency  to  it;  ready 
to  protest  and  having  a  recognized  right  to  protest 
because  of  an  undoubted  sympathy  and  love  ;  always 
bringing  in  new  elements  and  forms  of  nobleness 
out  of  the  fields  of  history,  and  up  from  the  depths 
of  its  own  nature,  —  is  not  this  the  character  of 
the  man  of  his  own  age,  the  man  of  his  own  class, 
who  makes  the  whole  world  and  all  time  more  rich? 
Is  not  this  the  timely  and  yet  universal  man  whom 


HIGHER   AND   LOWER   STANDARDS.  239 

it  may  well  stir  the  ambition  of  any  young  man  to 
become? 

I  know  but  one  step  more  to  make,  and  that,  while 
it  need  not  take  us  long  to  describe  it,  is  a  great  step, 
for  it  brings  all  our  subject  out  into  the  rich  land  of 
religion.  We  talk  about  getting  into  association 
with  the  universal  human  experience,  and  about 
listening  to  one's  own  conscience,  and  then  some  one 
starts  up  and  says,  "  Ah,  yes,  that  is  all  well,  but 
what  am  I  to  do  ?  I,  who  am  no  scholar,  who  can  be 
no  traveller,  and  who,  when  I  listen  for  my  con- 
science, hear  only  a  turmoil  of  doubts  and  perplex- 
ities all  in  confusion  down  below."  When  I  hear 
questions  such  as  that  my  thought  goes  back  to  Jesus, 
and  the  question  which  the  people  asked  one  another 
about  Him,  "Howknoweth  this  man  letters,  having 
never  learned,"  seems  to  throw  light  upon  it  all.  He 
was  no  scholar.  They  had  never  seen  Him  in  their 
schools.  But  He  knew  man  and  knew  Himself,  and 
by  and  by  they  learned  that  it  was  because  He  knew 
God. 

What  does  that  mean  for  us  ?  That  if  we  know 
God,  if  we  are  forever  trying  to  find  out  what  is  His 
will,  if  we  are  seeking  for  it  in  the  Bible,  if  we  are 
seeking  for  it  in  Christ,  we  find  in  knowing  Him  the 
true  enlargement  and  corrections  of  the  present 
standards ;  we  find,  in  knowing  Him,  the  revelation 
of  the  universal  experience  of  man  and  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  personal  conscience. 

How  true  that  is !  In  every  man  of  God  there  is  a 
breadth  and  depth  which  makes  him  free  of  the  world 
in  which  he  yet  most  intimately  lives.     In  God  there 


240  HIGHER   AND   LOWER   STANDARDS. 

is  the  universal  man  and  the  true  life  of  every  indi- 
vidual child  of  His.  Therefore,  whoever  loves  and 
serves  Him  finds  in  Him  the  constant  enlargement 
and  adjustment  of  his  life.  Demas  need  not  leave 
Paul  and  Paul's  Christ  in  order  that  he  may  love 
this  present  world.  He  will  know  how  to  love  and 
serve  this  present  world  all  the  more  completely  if 
he  knows  Christ  and  the  great  Revelation  of  God 
which  is  in  him. 

Oh  if  I  only  could  make  you  young  men  see  how 
there  is  here  the  true  solution  of  the  problem  of  your 
lives  !  Shall  you  be  God's  or  the  world's  ?  Be  both ! 
Not  in  any  low  miserable  compromise.  Not  by  the 
effort  to  serve  God  and  mammon.  But  by  a  brave  and 
filial  questioning  of  God  that  He  may  tell  you  just 
how  He  wants  a  child  of  His  to  live  in  this  peculiar 
time  and  under  these  peculiar  circumstances  of  yours. 
There  is  a  type  of  universal  human  life  in  harmony 
with  the  best  life  of  all  the  ages.  In  tune  with  the 
sublimest  and  finest  spiritual  music  of  the  universe, 
in  harmony  also  with  the  profoundest  dictates  of  your 
own  personal  conscience,  which  you  can  live  in  your 
parlor  and  your  shop ;  and  that  life  you  can  reach  if 
you  are  consecrated  to  God  in  your  own  place  and 
time.  If  you  live  that  life,  the  world  of  the  present 
owns  you  and  claims  you  and  rejoices  in  you.  The 
most  distant  life  of  man  looks  in  on  you  and  recog- 
nizes you  as  a  part  of  itself,  and  says,  "  Well  done !  " 
Up  from  your  own  conscience  speaks  your  self- 
approval.  And  God  your  Father  bends  His  love 
around  you,  and  out  of  His  blessing  feeds  you  with 
His  strength. 


HIGHER   AND  LOWER  STANDARDS.  241 

CoL_pared  with  such  a  life,  what  miserable  things 
are  these  feverish  efforts  either  to  suit  the  present 
world  or  to  reject  it  and  rebel  against  it.  Either 
Demas  strolling  once  more  in  the  streets  of  Thessa- 
lonica  with  his  sight  of  divine  things  faded  from  him 
like  a  dream,  or  some  poor  starved  hermit  sitting  in 
his  cave  and  trying  to  think  that  he  despises  that  life 
to  which  his  human  heart  still  tells  him  that  he 
belongs.  How  miserable  are  they  both  beside  the 
life  which  goes  like  Christ's,  from  duty  on  to  duty, 
from  experience  to  experience,  heartily  in  them  all, 
and  yet  above,  beyond  them  all,  in  hourly  commun- 
ion with  God,  with  the  complete  humanity,  and  with 
Himself. 

May  we  so  live  !  May  we  be  men  here,  now,  and 
yet  men  there  and  then ;  in  the  infinite,  in  the 
eternal,  while  yet  the  duties  of  the  present  world  are 
claiming  us,  and  we  are  doing  them  with  hands  made 
faithful  and  skilful  by  the  fire  of  God  1 


XIV. 

THE    NATURAL    AND    THE    SPIRITUAL. 

Howbeit  that  was  not  first  which  is  Spiritual,  but  that  which  is 
Natural ;  and  afterward  that  which  is  Spiritual.  —  I.  Cor.  xv.  46. 

"The  Adam  comes  before  the  Christ,"  St.  Paul 
declares.  And  he  is  simply  telling  the  story  of  the 
Bible.  The  man  of  the  Garden,  untrained,  undisci- 
plined, self-indulgent,  incapable  of  self-control,  comes 
before  the  Man  of  the  Cross,  who  willingly  surrenders 
the  present  for  the  future,  the  body  for  the  soul,  and 
Himself  for  others.  And  the  earthly  life  comes  be- 
fore the  life  of  heaven.  The  life  of  temptation,  and 
resistance,  and  surrender  comes  before  the  life  of 
spontaneity,  and  freedom,  and  attainment ! 

These  are  St.  Paul's  two  great  examples ;  and  then 
he  seems  to  gather  out  of  them  the  wide  and  general 
truth  which  they  contain.  He  surveys  the  universe 
and  finds  the  same  truth  everywhere.  Everywhere  the 
higher  comes  to  make  the  lower  perfect.  Everywhere 
the  lower  is  provided  first,  to  be  the  basis  and  oppor- 
tunity of  the  higher  coming  by  and  by.  Everywhere 
the  lips  must  be  before  the  speech ;  the  canvas  must 
be  before  the  picture  ;  the  candle  must  be  before  the 
flame ;  the  brain  must  be  before  the  thought.  It  is 
the  teaching  which  natural  science  is  giving  us  pro- 
fusely.    She  traces  the  long  progress  in  which  the 


THE  NATURAL   AND  THE   SPIRITUAL.  243 

material,  at  first  hard  and  sterile,  has  grown  fertile 
with  mysterious  emanation  and  clothed  itself  with 
higher  and  higher  life.  From  the  coarser  to  the 
finer  she  watches  the  growth  of  the  ever-ripening 
world.  Her  message  is  the  same  as  Paul's  :  "  That 
is  not  first  which  is  Spiritual,  but  that  which  is  Natu- 
ral ;  and  afterward  that  which  is  Spiritual." 

The  first  suggestion  which  would  come  from  such 
a  truth  is  very  crude  and  unsatisfactory.  It  is  that 
the  natural  is  helpless  until  the  spiritual  comes  to 
help  it.  Let  the  Adam  go  on  in  his  mere  physical 
manhood  till  the  Christ  appears.  Let  the  mortal 
live  its  lower  life  until  death  opens  to  it  the  doors 
of  immortality.  The  material  must  lie  in  its  tor- 
pidity until  the  spiritual  form  without  itself  comes 
and  puts  into  it  a  life  of  which  it  was  all  destitute 
before.  But  our  deeper  observation  teaches  us  a 
deeper  truth,  and  the  Bible  asserts  that  deeper  truth 
convincingly.  The  material  has  within  itself  the 
power  of  spiritual  life.  Its  total  story  has  not  been 
told  until  a  waiting  impulse  has  been  felt  within  it 
dimly  conscious  of  incompleteness,  until  it  has  an- 
swered to  the  spiritual  call  and  roused  itself  to  life. 
The  lips  are  not  complete  lips  till  they  have  spoken ; 
the  brain  is  not  a  whole  brain  till  it  has  thought. 
So  in  the  Bible  the  first  Adam  is  full  of  blind  Teach- 
ings and  desires,  which  the  second  Adam  alone  ful- 
fils. The  Life  of  man  here  upon  the  earth  is  capable 
of  a  heavenliness  which  heaven  alone  can  bring  to  its 
completeness.  The  whole  secret  of  the  physical  has 
not  been  read  until  its  power  of  becoming  spiritual 
by  service  of  the  spirit  has  been  discerned.     This  is 


244  THE  NATURAL  AND  THE  SPIRITUAL. 

what  Baptism  means.  It  is  the  declaration  that  this 
new-born  life,  which  seems  only  a  new-born  animal, 
has  in  it,  bound  up  with  it,  a  divine  nature.  Bap- 
tism is  the  claiming  of  that  nature.  It  is  the  asser- 
tion of  the  regeneration,  the  deeper  and  higher  birth, 
the  birth  from  heaven  which  is  coincident  with  the 
birth  from  earth,  and  which  is  to  use  the  physical 
basis  for  its  servant  and  its  power  of  development. 

I  hope  that  I  make  this  plain,  for  it  seems  to  me  to 
be  all-important.  A  man  sees  the  great  world  of 
spiritual  life.  He  believes  in  God  and  godlikeness. 
He  thinks  of  genius  and  of  sainthood.  He  knows 
that  there  are  such  things  as  great  self-sacrifices  and 
surrenders.  He  knows  of  this  spiritual  world,  but 
he  also  thoroughly  believes  that  he  does  not  belong 
to  it.  He  is  of  the  earth,  earthy.  He  is  physical, 
material,  limited  to  the  interests  and  needs  and  ex- 
periences of  the  lower  world.  "  Sometime,  perhaps 
at  death,"  he  says,  "  the  Power  may  come  which  will 
snatch  me  up  and  carry  me  away  and  put  me  in 
another  world,  in  which  now  I  have  no  share.  But 
now  that  other  world  is  to  me  as  if  it  did  not  exist. 
I  have  nothing  to  do  with  it,  or  it  with  me.  I  am 
a  creature  of  the  earth,  and  must  live  on  as  such 
until  God  perhaps  in  His  own  good  time  carries  me 
to  heaven." 

Is  not  that  the  simple  creed  about  themselves  by 
which  multitudes  of  men  are  practically  living  ?  It 
is  in  protest  against  that  creed  that  we  are  bound, 
with  St.  Paul  for  our  teacher,  to  try  to  understand 
the  true  relation  between  the  lower  and  the  higher 
lives,  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual  as  he 


THE  NATURAL   AND   THE   SPIRITUAL.  245 

describes   them.     That  is  what  I  want  to   do   this 
morning. 

The  truth  from  which  we  start  is  this,  that  so  far 
as  the  life  of  this  world  is  concerned,  every  spiritual 
operation  has  its  physical  basis,  in  close  connection 
with  which  it  lives  its  life  and  does  its  work.  The 
illustrations  of  that  truth  are  everywhere.  The 
growtli  of  the  tree  is  a  mysterious  and  spiritual 
power.  No  man  has  ever  seen  it.  It  cannot  be 
detected  at  its  labor  when  with  a  sudden  stroke  of 
the  axe  you  tear  the  tree's  trunk  open.  You  are  not 
quick  enough  to  find  it.  Your  sight  is  not  keen 
enough  to  catch  it.  And  yet  how  closely,  how  in- 
extricably it  is  bound  up  with  the  grosser  elements, 
in  connection  with  which  alone  it  does  its  work. 
There  must  be  the  black  earth  and  the  brown  seed, 
or  nothing  comes.  What  growth-power  ever  made 
manifestation  of  itself,  creating  out  of  nothing,  in 
the  air,  a  tree  that  had  no  history  and  no  progenitor  ? 
The  material  is  first,  and  then  the  spiritual.  Or  if  we 
look  in  quite  a  different  direction  —  the  character  of 
a  nation,  its  advance  in  cultivation,  and  in  the  pro- 
duction of  that  special  type  of  national  being  which 
constitutes  its  spiritual  power,  and  makes  it  a  real 
presence,  not  merely  on  the  map,  but  among  the 
spiritual  forces  of  the  world  —  this  has  its  physical 
basis.  The  soil  and  situation  of  the  country  where 
that  nation  lives,  the  amount  and  kind  of  its  material 
prosperity,  these  are  the  first  elements  which  tell  in 
the  production  of  the  nation's  life,  and  in  deciding 
of  what  sort  its  most  spiritual  productions  are  to  be. 
The  songs  of  its  singers  and  the  raptures  of  its  saints 


246  THE  NATURAL  AND   THE  SPIRITUAL. 

will  get  their  tone  from  the  mountains  from  which 
they  are  echoed,  or  from  the  waters  across  which  they 
float.  And  need  I  even  suggest  to  you  how  every 
man  has  in  his  bodily  constitution  the  physical  basis 
of  the  most  subtle  and  transcendent  parts  of  his  pro- 
foundest  life?  Out  from  the  very  marrow  of  his 
bones  comes  something  which  his  finest  affections 
never  outgo,  and  which  gives  a  color  to  his  soul's 
loftiest  visions.  His  dreams  are  different  from  other 
men's  because  of  the  texture  of  his  muscles  and  the 
color  of  his  blood.  It  is  on  the  harp  of  his  nervous 
system  that  the  Psalm  of  his  life  is  played.  There  is 
a  physical  correspondent  to  everything  that  he  thinks 
or  fancies.  There  is  a  physical  basis  to  his  most 
spiritual  life. 

In  the  story  of  man's  creation  in  the  Book  of  Gene- 
sis, a  story  which,  whatever  be  its  relation  to  history, 
contains  the  Ideas  of  Human  Life  most  picturesquely 
and  graphically  set  forth,  this  truth  of  the  physical 
basis  for  the  spiritual  life  appears  most  vividly. 
"  The  Lord  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground 
and  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life,  and 
man  became  a  living  soul."  The  scene  is  almost 
visible  before  us.  We  can  almost  see  the  clay-cold 
figure  laid  upon  the  ground,  the  corpse  which  never 
yet  has  lived ;  we  can  almost  feel,  that  which  we  can- 
not see,  the  awful  presence  bending  above  the  perfect 
body  and  sending  through  all  its  limbs  and  organs 
the  mysterious  thrill  of  life.  Each  limb  and  organ  is 
ready  for  the  power  which  occupies  it.  Each  has 
within  itself  the  unused  fitness  for  its  special  work. 
The  Breath  of  Life  finds  each  responsive  to  its  sum- 


THE  NATURAl.  AND  THE   SPIRITUAL.  247 

moas,  "  And  man  becomes  a  living  soul  I  "  Plow 
true  it  is  to  all  we  know  I  The  Perfect  Body  offering 
itself  for  the  medium  of  the  Perfect  Soul,  I  do  not 
know,  I  cannot  guess,  "what  was  the  nature  of  the 
historical  event  to  which  that  verse  refers.  But  I  do 
know  that  it  is  absolutely  true  to  that  great  order 
which  pervades  the  universe.  Everywhere  the  earthly 
conditions  offer  their  opportunities  to  the  celestial 
miracle.  The  fuel  is  cut  in  the  woods  of  earth ;  it 
is  piled,  hard  and  lifeless,  on  the  altar  of  unheeding 
stone,  and  then  from  it  the  flame  arises  a  live  aspir- 
ing column  and  lays  its  fiery  tribute  at  the  feet  of 
God.  "  That  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that 
which  is  natural ;  and  afterward  that  which  is  spir- 
itual." 

There  are  two  truths  here,  then.  The  first  is  that 
every  lower  life  is  made  to  reach  up  and  fulfil  itself 
in  a  higher,  and  the  second  is  that  every  higher  life 
must  have  its  basis  and  find  its  conditions  in  a  lower. 
Let  us  look  at  these  truths  in  turn,  and  see  if  they 
are  not  both  rich  in  practical  suggestion. 

1.  Every  lower  life  is  made  to  reach  up  and  fulfil 
itself  in  a  higher.  I  do  not  know  anything  which 
furnishes  more  food  for  thought  than  the  perplexity 
with  which  men  talk  about  the  care  of  their  human 
bodies.  Is  it  a  noble  or  ignoble  thing  ?  One  genera- 
tion devotes  itself  to  athletic  culture  as  if  there  were 
no  loftier  religion;  another  generation  despises  ex- 
ercise, and  goes  limping  and  coughing  among  the 
groves  of  its  academy  as  if  to  care  for  health 
or  sickness  were  unworthy  of  a  thinking  man.  A 
thousand  theories  cross  and  recross  one  another  as 


248  THE  NATURAL  AND  THE  SPIRITUAL. 

they  lie  tumbled  in  upon  each  other  in  chaotic  con- 
fusion. Would  it  not  be  good,  indeed,  if  these  words 
should  be  written  in  golden  letters  on  the  walls  of 
every  gymnasium  and  also  on  the  walls  of  every 
school  of  learning  and  cell  of  meditation  in  the  world: 
"That  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is 
natural."  As  they  stood  on  the  walls  of  the  gym- 
nasium, what  they  declared  would  be  the  need  of  a 
strong  body  for  all  best  spiritual  life.  As  they  stood 
written  on  the  study  wall,  they  would  mean  the 
utter  failure  of  the  strongest  body  unless  a  spiritual 
life  came  down  from  above  and  occupied  it,  came  out 
from  within  and  clothed  it  with  a  worthy  purpose. 
There  are  two  young  men  who  walk  our  streets,  both 
of  whom  have  their  admirers,  each  of  whom  seems  in 
some  eyes  to  be  an  admirable  fulfilment  of  humanity, 
both  of  whom,  judged  with  the  fullest  judgment,  are 
pitiable  failures.  One  of  them  is  the  young  student 
who  has  burnt  out  the  strength  of  his  body  in  his 
midnight  oil.  The  other  is  the  young  athlete  who 
has  given  away  to  muscle  the  care  and  culture  which 
was  meant  for  mind.  The  staggering  scholar  and 
the  stupid  athlete,  what  failures  they  both  are  !  what 
sad  and  helpless  fragments  of  humanity !  The  Body 
trained  as  thoroughly,  as  superbly  as  may  be  for  the 
spirit  uses.  Health  gathered  like  a  great  reservoir 
of  waters  to  be  set  free  and  turn  the  wheels  of  high 
thoughts,  and  generous  emotions,  and  benignant  chari- 
ties, —  there  is  the  true  relationship,  there  is  the  per- 
fect man,  there  is  the  balance  and  proportion  which 
is  written  in  the  noble  maxim  of  St.  Paul. 

What  is  the  strongest  thing  to  say  to  a  poor  young 


THE  NATURAL  AND   THE   SPIRITUAL.  249 

fool  who  is  wasting  his  bodily  strength  in  dissipation  ? 
Tell  him  about  an  early  grave,  and  what  does  he  care  ? 
He  talks  his  easy  philosophy  about  "Let  us  live 
while  we  live."  Scare  him  with  threats  of  physical 
reaction  and  decay,  and  he  buries  his  face  in  the 
wine-cup  and  dreams  of  suicide.  But  so  long  as  there 
is  any  spark  of  nobleness  left  in  him,  it  must  be  that 
there  is  a  chance  that  the  picture  of  an  intellect  weak- 
ened, and  a  moral  sense  dimmed,  and  a  soul  made 
unfit  for  any  high  enterprise  by  the  insufficiency  of 
the  physical  basis,  out  of  which  their  efforts  must  take 
their  start  and  spring,  will  waken  him  and  make  him 
think. 

Do  you  know,  O  young  men,  that  there  are  old 
men  all  through  this  city  whose  minds  are  powerless 
for  any  public  work  or  private  pleasure  because  of  the 
wrong  they  did  their  bodies  when  they  were  of  your 
age  ?  Do  honor  to  your  bodies.  Reverence  your 
physical  natures,  not  simply  for  themselves.  Only  as 
ends  they  are  not  worthy  of  it,  but  because  in  health 
and  strength  lies  the  true  basis  of  noble  thoughts  and 
glorious  devotion.  A  man  thinks  well  and  loves  well 
and  prays  well  because  of  the  red  running  of  his 
blood.  A  community  will  have  higher  tastes  and 
better  government  and  less  sordidness  and  less  crime 
when  its  alleys  and  tenement-houses  are  no  longer 
breeding-places  of  cholera  and  fever.  We  build  our 
schools  and  our  hospitals,  and  we  keep  them  apart 
from  one  another  as  if  they  had  no  true  connection. 
Only  when  in  our  thought  they  make  one  single 
system,  —  and  health  for  the  sake  of  intelligence 
and  character  is  what  we  seek,  —  only  then  shall  we 


250  THE  NATURAL   AND   THE    SPIRITUAL. 

be  sure  that  we    are  serving  and  saving  the  whole 
man. 

There  is  a  health  of  the  Community  which  corre- 
sponds to  the  health  of  the  physical  body  and  shares  in 
many  of  its  laws.  It  is  what  is  called  in  general  Ma- 
terial Prosperity.  It  has  its  failures  and  recoveries, 
its  fevers  and  its  paralyses,  its  full-blooded  vitality  and 
its  white-faced  decline.  What  shall  we  say  about  the 
Material  Prosperity  of  a  Community  ?  Sometimes 
it  is  depreciated  and  defamed.  Sometimes  we  are 
told  that  all  the  building  of  houses  and  laying  out 
of  roads  and  increase  of  the  comforts  and  conven- 
iences of  life  is  base  and  has  no  true  connection  with 
the  higher  life  of  man.  All  that  is  foolish.  The  con- 
nection between  the  lower  and  the  higher  is  a  certain 
fact,  and  cannot  be  ignored.  And  yet.  the  whole  way 
in  which  men  have  asserted  and  denied  that  connec- 
tion is  most  significant  and  well  deserves  our  study. 
Man's  treatment  of  wealth  has  been  one  of  the  strang- 
est indications  of  his  mental  and  spiritual  condition. 
Think  what  it  has  been.  He  has  denounced  wealth  in 
all  his  most  exalted  moods.  He  has  mused  and  de- 
claimed upon  its  wortlilessness.  And  yet  it  has  been 
the  passion  of  his  life  to  get  it,  and  to  get  it  more  and 
more.  Let  the  moralist  stand  at  the  corner  of  the 
street  and  tell  men  as  they  pass  that  money  will  not 
bring  happiness,  and  every  man  who  passes  will  pause 
just  long  enough  to  nod  to  the  sermon  a  melancholy 
assent,  and  then  the  whole  river  of  human  life  will 
pour  on  to  take  possession  of  the  last  newly  opened 
field  of  profitable  investment  and  make  a  little  more 
money.     Let  the  satirist  utter  his  stinging  denuncia- 


THE  NATURAL   AND  THE   SPIEITUAL.  251 

tion  of  the  way  in  which  men  pursue  that  which  they 
despise,  and  despise  that  which  they  pursue.  Let  all 
men  say  in  certain  moods  that  money-getting  is  a 
snare  ;  nevertheless  the  pursuit  goes  on,  and  in  spite 
of  their  contempt  of  wealth-seeking,  the  mass  of  men 
spend  their  nights  in  dreaming  and  their  days  in 
working  for  the  universally  desired  prize  of  wealth. 

Have  we  ever  carefully  asked  ourselves  what  all 
this  means,  —  this  practical  assertion  that  wealth  is 
good,  running  along  with  the  theoretical  assertion 
that  the  pursuit  of  wealth  is  bad  ?  If  we  do  ask  our- 
selves what  it  all  means,  are  we  not  led  immediately 
to  this,  that  it  is  exactly  the  state  of  things  which 
would  be  brought  about  if  some  power  which  ought 
to  develop  into  high  and  fine  results  were  constantly 
pursued,  without  the  demand  for  such  development 
being  forced  upon  it ;  a  restlessness  which  yet  should 
never  be  strong  enough  to  shake  the  pursuer  free 
from  his  pursuit ;  a  search  and  struggle  which  should 
never  grow  complacently  sure  of  itself  and  its  own 
justification ;  a  spasmodic  shame,  a  constantly  re- 
curring misgiving  and  yet  a  constant  pressing  for- 
ward in  the  dubious  way?  This  would  be  the 
inevitable  consequence  of  such  an  unsatisfactory 
condition. 

I  take  just  this  to  be  exactly  the  state  of  things 
concerning  the  pursuit  of  money  among  men  There 
is  a  wide  and  deep  conviction  that  material  well-being 
may  be  the  basis  of  fine  character  and  noble  life.  A 
rich  man  has  opportunities  of  goodness  which  a  poor 
man  does  not  have.  Self-culture  and  the  care  for 
others  lie  open  to  him  in  his  opulent  and  well-pro- 


252  THE  NATURAL   AND   THE    SPIRITUAL. 

vided  home.  The  getting  of  wealth  and  the  using 
of  wealth  both  open  the  chance  for  the  cultivation  of 
precious  qualities.  Therefore  no  baseness  of  the 
actual  business  world  has  ever  led  men's  soundest 
thought  to  condemn  money-getting  universally  and 
in  unsparing  terms.  On  the  other  hand,  the  search 
for  wealth  has  evidently  not  been  always  or  generally 
conscious  of  its  possibilities  and  responsibilities.  It 
has  been  sordid  and  selfish.  It  has  not  always  or 
generally  produced  refinement  or  charity.  It  has 
rested  contented  in  its  immediate  results.  It  has 
vulgarly  jingled  its  dollars  and  not  won  from  them 
the  true  gold  of  character. 

Does  not  all  that  suggest  what  the  true  issue  of  it 
all  must  be  ?  Not  by  abusing  money-getting,  but  by 
insisting  that  money-getting  must  have  ends  beyond 
itself.  Not  by  calling  wealth  wicked,  but  by  calling 
wicked  the  selfish,  the  licentious,  the  oppressive  use 
of  wealth.  Not  by  trying  to  make  all  men  poor,  but  by 
demanding  of  rich  men  that  they  shall  be  fine,  broad, 
helpful,  in  proportion  to  their  riches.  So  must  the 
problem  of  wealth  be  ultimately  solved.  None  but  a 
theorizer  or  a  dreamer  pictures  to  himself  the  time 
when  either  the  craving  for  large  personal  property 
will  be  eradicated  from  men's  souls,  or  when  by  arti- 
ficial legislation  it  will  become  impossible  for  any  man 
in  the  community  to  accumulate  great  riches.  But 
it  is  not  absurd  to  hope ;  sometimes  we  see  already 
glimpses  and  promises  that  it  may  come.  It  is  not 
absurd  to  hope  for  the  growth  of  a  private  conscience 
and  a  public  sentiment  which  shall  some  day  de- 
nounce and  discredit  the  rich  man  who,  in  his  riches 


THE  NATURAL   AND   THE  SPIRITUAL.  253 

keeps  a  vulgar  soul  or  a  stingy  hand.  The  tree  must 
bear  its  fruit,  or  else  it  is  a  cumberer  of  the  ground. 
The  fountain  must  not  turn  into  a  pool.  "  That  is  not 
first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is  natural; 
and  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual."  The  natural 
is  all  right  and  good  if  it  is  reaching  toward  the 
spiritual ;  but  the  natural,  the  material  which  desires 
and  promises  no  spiritual  result,  is  failure  and  deserves 
contempt.  That  is  the  application  of  our  truth  to 
personal  or  national  well-being  and  success. 

What  is  true  of  wealth  is  true  of  all  the  manifold 
experiences  of  life.  Experiences  are  the  material  of 
Character,  the  physical  basis  of  feeling  and  thought. 
Something  happens  to  you,  and  you  thereby  enter 
into  the  possibility  of  a  higher  and  completer  nature. 
The  man  of  many  experiences  has  the  opportunity 
of  being  a  man  of  manifold  life.  But  yet,  as  we  all 
know,  as  we  all  see,  the  opening  of  experiences  into 
character  is  by  no  means  a  necessary  or  inevitable 
thing.  What  shall  we  say  about  the  man  who  has 
gone  up  and  down  the  world,  had  part  in  a  vast 
variety  of  occupations,  crossed  many  seas,  climbed 
many  mountains,  walked  the  streets  of  many  cities, 
talked  with  a  thousand  men,  been  tossed  hither  and 
thither  on  the  distracting  billows  of  all  kinds  of  life, 
and  yet  is,  after  all,  the  same  meagre,  narrow,  unsym- 
pathetic, unrefined  mortal  which  he  was  at  the  be- 
ginning? His  History  is  nothing  but  a  Diary.  He 
himself  is  only  like  a  much-travelled  log.  What  can 
we  say  except  that,  in  him,  experience  has  failed  of 
its  result.  It  has  not  opened  into  Character.  The 
man  has  gathered  nothing  but  recollections.     He  is 


254  THE  NATURAL   AND   THE   SPIRITUAL. 

no  more  a  man.  He  has  gathered  no  strength.  The 
Natural  has  never  come  into  the  Spiritual. 

You  see  the  difference  whenever  you  talk  with 
two  men  who  have  come  home  from  their  tour  in 
Europe,  or  who  have  passed  through  great  suffering 
and  sorrow,  or  who  are  nearing  the  shore  which  lies 
the  other  side  of  life.  You  know  at  once  which  of 
them  has  transmuted  experiences  into  intelligence 
and  character,  and  which  of  them  brings  his  experi- 
ences like  so  many  hard  jewels  held  in  his  hand,  his 
treasure,  but  in  no  sense  a  part  of  him.  The  first 
man  might  forget  everything  which  has  happened  to 
him,  and  all  that  happened  to  him  would  still  remain 
in  its  essential  power  in  his  life.  If  the  other  man 
forgot  the  facts  of  his  life,  there  would  be  nothing 
left.     He  might  as  well  not  have  lived. 

It  is  good  to  multiply  experiences.  It  is  good  to 
do  many  things  and  to  have  manifold  relations  with 
the  world.  It  is  good  to  touch  many  people  and  to 
see  many  sights  ;  but  it  is  good,  it  is  necessary,  to  be 
content  with  no  experience  which  remains  simply  as 
experience  and  does  not  pass  on  and  into  character. 
Events  are  great  if  they  make  dispositions.  The 
Natural  is  precious  if  "  afterward,"  out  of  it,  comes 
the  Spiritual.  The  experienced  man  is  happy,  if  he 
has  really  drunk  the  rain  and  sunshine  of  the  ex- 
periences which  have  come  to  him  into  his  heart  and 
is  the  ripened  man,  otherwise  he  is  only  like  the  rock 
on  which  every  passer-by  has  scrawled  his  name. 

Thus  everywhere  the  lower  furnishes  opportunities 
for  the  higher,  and  is  a  failure  unless  the  higher 
blooms  out  of  the  ground  which  the  lower  has  made 


THE  NATURAL  AND  THE  SPIRITUAL.  256 

ready.  It  is  Paul's  groaning  and  travailing  creation. 
It  is  the  unity  of  the  universe  in  which,  from  end  to 
end,  there  is  no  hardest,  commonest,  and  cheapest 
thing  which,  living  in  simple  healthiness  and  self- 
respect,  may  not  become  the  gathering  point  and 
manifestation  point  of  the  most  infinite  celestial 
light,  —  no  stone  that  may  not  make  an  altar.  Rever- 
ence the  simple,  the  prosaic,  the  natural,  the  real, 
but  demand  of  every  common  thing  of  life,  whether 
it  be  your  body  or  your  money  or  your  daily  experi- 
ence, that  it  shall  bloom  to  fine  results  in  your  own 
soul  and  in  your  influence  upon  the  world.  Freely 
accept  the  natural  as  first,  but  demand  that  afterward 
the  spiritual  shall  not  fail. 

2.  There  remains  but  very  little  time  for  me  to 
dwell  upon  our  second  truth,  which  was,  you  remem- 
ber, the  other  side  of  that  of  which  I  have  been 
speaking.  As  the  natural  must  open  into  the  spiritual 
or  it  is  a  failure,  so  the  spiritual  must  root  itself  in 
the  natural  or  it  becomes  vague  and  unreal.  I  see 
at  once  how  true  this  is  of  the  two  great  illustrative 
instances  which  I  began  by  pointing  out  that  St. 
Paul  uses.  The  second  Adam  follows  the  first 
Adam.  Christ  comes  after  and  completes  the  hu- 
manity which  had  been  in  the  world  before  His  In- 
carnation. And  as  that  Humanity  would  have  been 
sad  indeed  had  He  not  come  to  fulfil  its  glimpses 
with  His  light  and  to  realize  its  broken  hopes,  so 
He,  when  He  has  come,  needs  and  demands  the  hu- 
manity behind  Him,  and  roots  His  own  life  in  the 
great  universal  soil  of  human  life.  Ah,  yes,  the 
Saviour's   wonderful   career  was  no  mere  cloud  or 


25G  THE  NATURAL   AND  THE   SPIRITUAL. 

sunbeam  flung  out  of  the  sky  and  floating  vaguely 
over  a  world  of  which  it  formed  no  certain  part.  He 
felt  our  human  blood  through  all  His  veins.  His 
most  transcendent  miracles  were  done  with  human 
hands.  He  loved  His  age,  His  city,  and  His  race. 
The  least  and  meanest  Jew,  the  least  and  meanest 
man,  interpreted  to  Him  his  Sonship  to  the  Father. 
He  knew  Himself,  and  we  can  know  Him  only  as  we 
believe  in  Him,  and  try  to  understand  Him  as  the 
Son  of  Man. 

Or,  if  we  take  Paul's  other  illustration,  the  perfect 
world  rests  on  and  finds  its  interpretation  in  this 
world  of  imperfection  in  which  we  are  living  now.  I 
cannot  understand  the  man  I  meet  upon  the  street 
unless  I  see  in  him  the  man  who  some  day  is  to  walk 
in  the  new  Jerusalem.  And  also  the  man  walking 
in  the  new  Jerusalem  is  unintelligible  unless  I  know 
he  is  the  same  man  who  once  walked  here  upon  the 
street.  The  fights  and  victories,  the  fights  and  de- 
feats, which  he  made  here  have  passed  into  his  nature 
and  are  part  and  parcel  of  his  life  forever. 

Here  is  the  key  to  the  true  realism.  Here  is  the 
sign  how  false  the  shallow  realism  is  of  which  its 
artists  on  canvas  or  on  paper  make  such  base  parade. 
The  real  life,  what  is  it  ?  Is  it  the  wretched,  sordid 
details  of  earthly  living,  uninspired  by  a  single  sug- 
gestion that  in  their  mud  and  mire  there  are  the 
seeds  of  any  spiritual,  transcendent  fruit  or  flower? 
On  the  other  hand,  is  the  real  life  a  vision  of  some 
experience  beyond  the  stars  which  has  no  connection 
with  the  dreariness  and  degradation  of  many  of  the 
mortal  conditions  which  it  has  passed  through  and 


THE   NATURAL   AND   THE   SPIRITUAL.  257 

left  behind?  Not  so.  The  real  life  of  a  man  is  his 
highest  attainment  kept  in  perpetual  association  with 
the  meanest  and  (3oramonest  experience  out  of  which 
it  has  been  fed.  When  men  shall  so  write  and  paint 
the  lives  of  one  another,  then  we  shall  have  the 
true  realism,  —  a  realism  in  which,  to  use  the  Psalm- 
ist's words,  "  Truth  shall  flourish  out  of  the  earth  and 
Righteousness  look  down  from  Heaven." 

In  such  a  completed  realism  as  this  lies  the  sin- 
cerity and  healthiness  of  personal  and  social  life. 
Get  hold  thoroughly  of  this  idea  that  the  Spiritual 
must  always  feel  behind  it  the  Natural  from  which  it 
proceeds,  and  from  which  it  is  fed,  and  then  how  im- 
possible it  would  be  for  you  to  despise  any  part  of 
your  life  or  to  think  light  of  any  true  work  which 
you  are  called  to  do.  If  your  faith  in  God  is  stronger 
for  every  humble  task  in  which  you  need  and  get 
His  aid,  then  that  humble  task  is  necessary  to  the 
fulness  of  your  faith  in  God.  You  cannot  let  go  of 
it  and  fly  away.  It  is  redeemed.  It  will  go  with 
you  to  the  world  where  your  Redemption  will  be  per- 
fect. It  will  make  the  music  of  your  celestial  life 
more  firm  and  solid.  If  so,  you  cannot  despise  it 
here  or  call  it  slisrht. 

And  also  there  must  come  a  sympathy  between  the 
men  whose  work  it  is  to  lay  the  hard  foundations  of 
life  and  the  other  men  whose  hands  are  bidden  to 
carry  up  the  loftiest  pinnacles  and  spires  into  the  sky. 
There  are  those  who  seem  to  be  doomed  to  most 
earthly  toil ;  just  to  be  conscientious,  and  upright, 
and  thorough,  and  true.  It  seems  as  if  that  were 
everything  for  them.     There  are  other  men  whose 


258  THE   NATURAL   AND   THE   SPIRITUAL. 

souls  leap  to  triumphant  thoughts,  and  whose  eyes 
are  open  to  ecstatic  visions.  The  great  issue  of 
all  that  I  have  been  saying  to  you  this  morning  is 
that  these  two  sorts  of  men  belong  together,  make 
one  world,  are  serving  the  purposes  of  one  God,  and 
making  ready  one  celestial  kingdom,  and  deserve 
each  the  other's  whole-souled  respect.  It  is  not  that 
the  lesser  man  is  making  his  life  successful  by  mak- 
ing possible  a  higher  life  which  some  other  man  may 
live,  though  that  is  much.  It  is  not  possible  to  look 
at  it  in  such  detail  as  that.  It  is  that  in  this  universe, 
where  natural  and  spiritual  succeed  and  minister  to 
one  another,  he  who  at  any  spot  is  doing  good  work 
of  any  kind  is  serving  the  Universal  Master  and  con- 
tributing to  the  Universal  Success. 

Christ  had  His  word  of  encouragement  and 
strength  to  say  to  every  soldier  in  His  army  and  to 
every  worker  at  His  work.  He  made  both  Martha  and 
Mary  the  servants  of  His  will.  It  is  not  only  His 
loftiest  disciples  at  their  loftiest  tasks.  It  is  all  souls, 
all  hands  and  feet  that  have  duty  to  perform.  They 
all  belong  to  Him;  not  merely  scholars  in  their 
studies,  not  merely  missionaries  in  their  martyrdoms, 
not  merely  saints  in  their  closed  closets,  but  every 
working  man  and  woman  everywhere,  —  they  are  all 
His.  The  spirit  which  proceeds  from  Him  may  pour 
through  the  whole  mass  and  find  out  every  particle, 
and  give  to  each  an  impetus  towards  its  own  next 
higher  stage  of  life,  and  so  bear  the  whole  along  to- 
gether towards  the  completion  of  each  man  and  the 
completion  of  the  whole  business  and  social  life,  and 
politics,  and  education,  and  then,  as  the  crown  of 


THE  NATURAL   AND  THE   SPIRITUAL.  259 

them  all,  Religion.  "  That  is  not  first  which  is 
Spiritual,  but  that  which  is  Natural ;  and  afterward 
that  which  is  Spiritual !  "  But  they  are  all  God's  ; 
and  to  make  each  instinct  with  what  measure  of 
His  life  it  is  capable  of  containing,  that  is  to  build 
them  all  into  a  flight  of  shining  stairs,  sweeping  up- 
ward into  even  clearer  and  intenser  light,  until  he 
who  mounts  to  the  full  summit  stands  by  the  altar 
of  God's  unclouded  presence  and  realizes  the  blessed- 
ness of  perfect  Communion  with  Him. 


XV. 

THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

"And  Joshua  said  unto  all  the  people,  Behold,  this  stone  shall 
be  a  witness  unto  us ;  for  it  hath  heard  all  the  words  of  the  Lord 
which  He  spake  unto  us  :  it  shall  be  therefore  a  witness  unto  you, 
lest  ye  deny  your  God."  —  Joshua  xxiv.  27. 

Joshua  had  led  the  people  of  Israel  over  the  Jor- 
dan and  into  the  promised  land  as  far  as  Shechem. 
There  he  halted  the  host  for  a  most  solemn  ceremony. 
It  was  a  poor  and  insignificant  thing;  it  made  their 
great  invasion  to  be  only  like  any  restless  movement 
of  one  tribe  of  heathen  into  the  territory  of  another, 
unless  they  entered  the  promised  country  and  began 
their  new  career  distinctly  as  the  people  of  God. 
Therefore  at  Shechem  Joshua  makes  them  renew 
their  sworn  dedication  to  Jehovah.  He  gives  them 
once  more  the  old  familiar  Mosaic  message  of  the 
Lord:  "Now  therefore  fear  the  Lord  and  serve  him 
in  sincerity  and  in  truth."  And  when  the  people 
had  answered  the  voice  of  God  with  solemn  promises 
of  loyalty,  then  Joshua  sealed  the  whole  ceremony 
with  a  picturesque  and  striking  figure.  He  took  a 
great  stone  and  set  it  up  there  under  an  oak  which 
was  by  the  sanctuary  of  the  Lord.  He  said,  "This 
stone  has  heard  what  God  has  said;  here  it  shall 
stand  as  witness  to  you  lest  you  deny  your  God." 
"  You  may  forget,"  he  seemed  to  sav.     "  Your  minds 


THE    STONE    OF     SHECHEM.  261 

are  soft  and  lose  impressions.  They  are  hot  and  burn 
with  reckless  passion."  Here  is  this  hard,  cold  stone. 
It  never  will  forget,  it  never  will  distort  the  voice 
tliat  it  has  listened  to.  When  you  need  it  for  en- 
couragement and  when  you  need  it  for  rebuke,  this 
stone  which  has  heard  what  God  has  said  shall  be 
here  to  utter  forever  His  unforgotten  words. 

All  readers  of  the  Bible  know  how  common  in  its 
pages  is  this  simple,  majestic,  childlike  figure  which 
Joshua  employed, — the  figure  which  clothes  an  in- 
animate and  unintelligent  object  with  perception  and 
memory  and  the  power  of  utterance.  It  is  the  figure 
which  children  use  in  their  plays.  It  is  the  figure 
of  a  primitive  and  unsophisticated  people,  and  seems 
to  show  how  near  they  stand  to  nature,  how  close 
they  are  in  the  confidence  of  the  rocks  and  trees  and 
stars.  It  is  the  figure  which  creates  a  large  part  of 
the  mythologies  and  is  at  the  root  of  much  of  the 
monumental  instinct  of  mankind.  And  in  the  Bible 
it  is  constantly  present  in  its  highest,  freshest,  and 
most  vivid  form.  When  Cain  kills  Abel  in  the  book 
of  Genesis  it  is  the  actual  literal  blood  of  the  murdered 
man  that  takes  a  voice  and  cries  out  from  the  ground 
so  that  God  hears  it  up  in  Heaven.  When  Job  tells 
the  story  of  creation,  he  makes  us  hear  the  very 
"morning  stars  sing  together  in  the  sky."  When 
the  same  Job  asserts  his  integrity  and  justice,  he  calls 
upon  the  very  earth  that  he  has  tilled  to  contradict 
him  if  he  does  not  speak  the  truth.  "  If  my  land  cry 
against  me,  or  that  the  furrows  thereof  complain, 
let  thistles  grow  instead  of  wheat,  and  cockle  instead 
of  barley."     When  David  goes  out  into  the  morning 


262  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

sunlight  he  hears  the  "  Heavens  declare  the  glory  of 
God."  When  Habakkuk  is  denouncing  woes  upon 
the  covetous  men  and  the  oppressors  of  the  poor,  he 
makes  their  very  houses  speak  and  tell  of  the  in- 
iquity and  cruelty  which  built  them.  "  The  stone 
shall  cry  out  of  the  wall,  and  the  beam  out  of  the 
timber  shall  answer  it."  When  Jesus  rides  across  the 
rocky  ridge  of  Olivet  toward  Jerusalem,  He  declares 
that  the  rocks  under  His  feet  are  all  ready  to  break 
out  in  His  praises  if  the  voices  of  the  people  fail. 
"  I  tell  you  that  if  these  should  hold  their  peace,  the 
stones  would  immediately  cry  out."  And  when  St. 
James  upbraids  the  cruel  rich  men  of  his  day,  even 
the  coins  of  which  they  have  defrauded  their  servants 
take  a  voice.  "  Behold  the  hire  of  the  laborers  who 
have  reaped  down  your  fields,  which  is  of  you  kept 
back  by  fraud,  crieth."  The  Bible  is  preeminently 
the  book  of  man ;  but  the  world  in  which  man  lives 
and  the  material  things  he  touches  are  always  pres- 
ent in  the  Bible  for  his  sake. 

The  splendor  of  the  sunshine,  the  whisper  of  the 
wind,  the  very  smell  of  the  rich  ground,  are  always 
there,  not  for  their  own  beauty  or  sweetness,  but  for 
their  ministries  and  messages  to  man ;  and  man  and 
nature  stand  as  close  to  one  another  as  in  the  child's 
fairy  story  or  the  poet's  dream,  which  keep  the  Bible 
tone  and  coloring  for  all  the  ages. 

I  have  referred  to  all  these  instances  only  to 
remind  you  how  thoroughly  Joshua  is  a  man  of  the 
Bible  when  he  sets  his  stone  up  at  Shechem  and  calls 
upon  the  people  to  endow  it  in  their  imaginations 
with  the  powers  of  hearing  and  of  utterance.     "  This 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  263 

stone  hath  heard  all  the  words  of  the  Lord."  Crowded 
away  under  its  hard  substance  lay  the  story  and  the 
Commandments  which  He  had  uttered.  Nothing  un- 
til the  new  wonder  of  the  phonograph,  which  packs 
a  human  voice  into  the  matter  of  a  bit  of  lead  and 
can  keep  it  there  for  years,  and  utter  it,  with  all  its 
first  tones  and  inflections  to  a  generation  now  un- 
born,—  nothing  until  this  marvel  of  to-day  has  so 
made  an  actual  material  reality  of  this  imagination 
of  the  captain  of  the  Jews.  Think  what  that  stone 
must  have  been  to  all  the  people  !  It  had  heard  God 
speak.  The  words  of  God  were  in  it.  No  wonder 
if  they  almost  made  it  an  idol.  How  it  must  have 
changed  with  the  changes  of  their  lives  !  How  to 
their  consciences,  acute  with  certain  crime,  the  word 
of  God  must  have  spoken  out  of  the  stone  in  stern 
and  withering  rebuke !  How  when  some  Jew  was 
trying  to  do  right,  to  resist  his  temptations,  he  must 
have  heard  God  speak  to  him  out  of  the  stone,  giving 
him  approbation  and  encouragement  and  strength  ! 
The  very  rough  face  of  the  rock  must  have  seemed 
to  those  simple  and  susceptible  people  to  smile  or 
frown  on  them  as  they  passed  before  it,  carrying 
their  conscious  experiences  in  them.  All  the  more 
because  it  spoke  no  audible  word,  it  must  have 
seemed  to  have  its  own  voice  for  every  man. 

It  is  no  fancy,  certainly,  to  say  that  there  are 
always  people  who  are  to  the  world  they  live  in 
what  that  stone  in  Shechem  was  to  the  nation  in 
the  midst  of  which  it  stood.  Not  voluble  people, 
not  people  with  their  glib  and  ready  judgment 
upon   everything  which   goes   on  about  them,   per- 


264  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

haps  people  who  seem  to  the  world  at  large  mere 
stones.  But  people  who  "  have  heard  the  words  of 
the  Lord  which  He  hath  spoken,"  and  who  henceforth 
"are  witnesses  unto  us  lest  we  deny  our  God." 
Such  men  or  women  I  am  sure  that  we  have  known. 
People  who  some  time  in  their  lives  had  had  the  pri- 
mary truth  of  God,  the  Divinity  of  Righteousness, 
spoken  so  into  their  ears  that  it  has  filled  their  being. 
Thenceforward  they  spoke  that  word  in  all  its  sim- 
plicity to  everybody.  All  earnest  struggle  after 
righteousness  feels  their  approval  and  sympathy,  and 
counts  it  really  God's.  All  shuffling,  cowardly,  and 
wanton  sin  hides  or  hurries  away  from  their  rebuk- 
ing presence.  They  declare  no  subtleties  and  no 
refinements.  They  simply,  broadly  utter  right  and 
wrong.  Such  people  have  a  noble  place  and  func- 
tion in  the  world.  Men  who  would  not  own  God's 
judgments  directly,  own  God's  judgments  as  they 
come  through  them.  They  purify  and  bless  the 
circle,  the  community  in  which  they  live,  as  that 
stone  under  the  oak  at  Shechem  must  have  seemed 
to  purify  and  bless  the  whole  land  of  Israel. 

But  I  do  not  mean  to  speak  too  generally  of  this 
piece  of  picturesque  history  which  seems  to  me  to 
suggest  a  very  definite  and  useful  subject  for  our 
thought.  I  want  to  speak  to  you  this  afternoon  of 
the  real  nature  and  value  of  association,  of  that 
power  which  gives  to  the  objects  which  surround 
mankind  a  sort  of  human  character  and  make  them 
vocal  with  messages  of  comfort  and  strength  and 
rebuke.  This  is  the  real  subject  of  our  verse. 
Joshua's  rock  was  transformed  by  the  power  of  asso- 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  265 

elation.  One  hour  it  was  a  great  dead  stone,  as 
silent  and  uninspiring  as  any  other  of  the  stones  among 
which  it  lay.  The  next  hour  it  had  been  taken  up 
and  separated  from  all  its  mates  forever,  a  sacred 
stone,  a  fountain  of  inspiration,  a  fire  of  poetry  and 
life.  It  was  the  association  with  the  solemn  self-con- 
secration of  the  Jews  which  had  transformed  it.  And 
our  association  is  always  the  transforming  power. 
Out  of  our  use  of  the  power  of  association  comes 
much  of  our  best  education  and  our  deepest  re- 
sponsibility. 

The  work  that  man  does  upon  the  world  he  lives  in, 
then,  is  really  double.  He  makes  his  changes  in  its 
outward  face.  He  turns  it  by  his  toil  of  spade  or 
chisel  into  forms  of  use  or  beauty.  He  sprinkles  it 
with  cities  and  ploughs  it  up  and  down  with  furrows. 
This  is  the  first  work.  And  then  more  subtly  he 
fills  it  with  his  associations.  Without  any  change  in 
their  shape  he  sends  his  history  in  through  the 
mountains  and  the  fields,  so  that  it  clings  there  for- 
ever and  never  can  be  separated.  He  twines  the 
things  that  he  has  done  with  the  scenery  of  the 
earth,  so  that  thereafter  they  are  inseparable.  Every- 
body who  has  any  sensibility  sees  that  this  second 
power  of  man  over  nature  is  the  finer  and  the  nobler. 
It  is  the  greater  enrichment  of  the  world  by  man. 
Herod  builds  a  temple  at  Jerusalem.  With  vast  labor 
he  levels  the  rough  places,  and  hews  the  great  stone 
blocks  into  shape.  When  it  is  done,  his  temple 
shines  like  a  jewel  on  its  hill.  Jesus  comes  right 
across  the  little  valley  to  the  Mount  of  Olives.  He 
changes  nothing  outward.     He  sticks  no  spade  into 


266  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

its  surface.  He  leaves  each  bush  and  olive-tree  as 
He  finds  it.  But  there  He  ofttimes  resorts  with  His 
disciples.  There  He  lies  prostrate  in  the  struggle  of 
Gethsemane.  There  at  last  His  feet  touch  the  earth 
as  He  ascends  to  Heaven,  and  ever  since  those  days 
the  mountain  burns  in  the  dearest  and  most  sacred 
memory  of  man.  There  are  men  to  whom  this  seems 
to  be  the  one  value  of  the  external  world  —  to  utter 
the  men  who  have  lived  and  displayed  their  natures 
in  it.  Mere  beauty  of  scenery,  mere  triumphs  of 
gigantic  engineering  which  have  changed  the  face  of 
the  earth,  have  little  charm  for  them  except  as  they 
are  the  background  of  human  history.  This  is  what 
makes  the  Old  World  richer  than  the  New.  It  is  the 
absence  of  association  in  our  bays  and  headlands,  in 
our  rivers  and  our  mountains  and  our  prairies,  that 
makes  a  sort  of  vast  silence  in  our  enormous  West, 
solemn  enough  and  infinitely  impressive,  but  wholly 
different  from  the  chorus  of  voiceful  memories  that 
thrills  one  who  lands  on  the  shores  across  the  sea  and 
finds 

"  Each  gray  old  rock  a  grand  historic  thing, 
Each  bright  wave  boasting  it  has  borne  a  king, 
Undying  footprints  on  each  sandy  beach, 
Each  old  wave  vocal  with  heroic  speech." 

Evidently  one  great  value  of  this  principle  of  asso- 
ciation which  clothes  the  world  with  the  memories  of 
human  life,  and  makes  it  utter  man,  is  that  it  keeps  in 
mind  and  constantly  asserts  the  centralness  and  right- 
ful superiority  of  man  in  the  world  where  he  lives. 
The  thinker  in  whom  this  principle  is  strong  must 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  267 

always  practically  hold  that  man  is  the  centre,  that 
all  else  on  earth  exists  for  him.  And  without  such 
a  faith  as  that,  all  human  experience  seems  to  testify 
that  man  cannot  live  his  best  and  fullest  life.  Man 
is  greater  than  nature,  —  nature  exists  for  man. 
These  are  truths  upon  which,  thus  far  at  least,  in  hu- 
man history  has  hung  man's  power  of  conceiving  the 
sublimest  hopes  and  feeling  the  most  pressing  sense  of 
obligation.  If  ever  those  truths  should  be  success- 
fully denied  and  man  dislodged  from  his  centralness, 
I  think  we  cannot  know  how  all  the  highest  life  of 
man  would  suffer.  That  self-respect  which  lies  at 
the  root  of  all  moral  struggle  and  all  religion,  that 
self-respect  which  is  what  makes  credible  to  the 
Christian  the  great  Christian  revelations  of  the  divine 
fatherhood  and  the  divine  redemption,  that  self-re- 
spect which  is  the  real  starting-point  for  true  humil- 
ity, it  could  not  be  maintained  if  man's  life  should 
be  shown  to  be  coordinate  with  all  the  lives  around 
it,  no  more  the  purpose  and  interpreter  of  the  rest 
than  the  lives  of  the  lion  or  the  oak.  And  the  actual 
preservation  of  this  sense  of  centralness  lies  very 
largely  in  the  way  in  which  man  covers  the  earth 
with  his  associations  and  makes  the  landmarks  of 
nature  take  their  best  value  from  the  stories  which 
they  have  to  tell  of  him. 

Nor  is  this  secondary  character,  this  monumental 
value  which  the  earth  acquires,  something  which 
comes  from  a  few  great  exploits  which  wonderful 
men  have  done  upon  its  highest  pinnacles  of  promi- 
nence. There  is  a  gradually  increasing  richness  in 
the  earth  to  which  every  man  who  in  the  humblest 


268  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

station  lives  a  wortliy  and  a  faithful  life  contributes. 
The  outer  world  gets  the  voice  of  God,  not  only  from 
God  directly,  but  from  some  Joshua  who  lias  spoken 
it  in  its  presence  ;  and  the  world  in  which  we  live  be- 
comes vocal  with  Him  to  men  in  future  days  when- 
ever any  man  protests  against  wickedness,  or  speaks 
a  word  of  truth  or  charity,  or  utters  the  God  of 
strength  in  patience  in  any  corner  of  the  most  ob- 
scure experience.  I  know  not  how  real,  how  practi- 
cal, this  seems  to  you  ;  but  I  am  sure  that  the  world 
is  a  better  place  for  you  and  me  to  live  in  tu-day,  not 
merely  for  the  hundred  great  pattern  lives  which 
have  passed  into  the  heavens  and  which  we  call  still 
by  their  names,  but  far  more  for  the  countless,  name- 
less multitude  of  men  and  women  who  have  wrought 
into  the  very  substance  of  the  earth,  where  at  last 
they  lay  their  bodies  in  unnoticed  graves,  the  great, 
first,  simplest  words  of  God,  that  man  was  sacred, 
that  duty  was  possible,  that  self-sacrifice  was  sweet, 
and  that  love  for  one's  brother  was  the  crown  of  life. 
And  you  ought  not  to  be  satisfied  until  you  find  your- 
self able  to  feel  that  the  hope  of  doing  something  by 
your  living  to  make  the  world  in  a  real,  although  an 
unappreciable,  degree  more  full  of  these  words  for 
the  men  who  are  to  follow  us,  is  the  noblest  and 
most  inspiring  promise  which  can  be  set  before 
your  soul. 

The  world  is  too  large  for  some  of  us  to  think  of. 
Turn,  then,  and  tliink  about  the  houses  where  you 
live.  How  large  a  part  of  their  influence  upon  you 
depends  .upon  this  principle  of  association.  Of  the 
walls  of  a  house  Avhere  much  life   has   been  lived, 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  269 

where  many  experiences  have  been  passed  through, 
might  not  one  say  exactly  what  Joshua  said  about 
the  stone  that  he  set  up  in  Shechem,  "  They  have 
heard  all  the  words  of  the  Lord  which  He  spake 
unto  you  "  ?  And  indeed  the  parallel  goes  farther. 
The  word  which  your  household  walls  have  heard 
from  God,  and  which  they  are  still  constantly  utter- 
ing to  you  if  you  can  only  hear  it,  is  the  same  word 
which  He  had  spoken  in  the  presence  of  the  old  stone 
at  Shechem,  and  of  which  that  stone  was  a  perpetual 
witness  to  the  people.  What  was  the  witness  of 
that  stone  ?  It  was  the  necessity  and  the  blessing 
of  obedience  to  God.  That  was  what  God  had  com- 
manded. That  was  what  the  people  had  sworn. 
That  was  what  the  stone  had  heard  and  what  it  bore 
perpetual  witness  of  afterward  to  those  who  passed 
it  and  heard  with  their  consciences  its  silent  voice ; 
that  not  by  his  own  will,  but  in  subjection  to  a  will 
far  greater  than  his  own,  the  Jew  was  to  occupy  this 
new  land  and  to  live  the  new  life  which  was  before 
him.  And  not  merely  this  stone,  but  every  monu- 
ment which  had  drunk  in  his  nation's  history  and 
stood  to  utter  it  perpetually,  had  the  same  tale  to 
tell.  The  rock  where  Abraham  had  carried  up  his 
son  and  stood  with  the  knife  just  ready  to  complete 
the  dreadful  sacrifice  ;  the  stone  at  Bethel  where 
Jacob  vowed  his  vow  of  consecration  ;  the  twelve 
stones  that  the  Jews  left  piled  in  the  bed  of  Jordan 
when  they  crossed  dry-shod,  —  they  all  told  the  same 
story ;  they  all  meant  the  same  thing.  It  was  that 
Jewish  truth  of  covenant.  Since  God  has  done  this 
for  us  we  belong  to  Him,  we  hereby  acknowledge  His 


270  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

ownership  and  give  ourselves  to  His  service.  In  that 
truth  all  the  land  was  steeped.  And  its  utterance 
came  from  every  rude  monument  which  any  Jew  or 
all  the  Jewish  people  had  set  up  to  commemorate 
mercy  and  to  proclaim  dedication.  Now  think  of 
any  house  which  by  long  life  of  some  family  in  it  has 
become  monumental.  Its  walls  have  other  and  far 
deeper  values  than  these  for  which  you  or  your 
fathers  paid  the  architects  and  carpenters  when  it 
was  first  built.  Those  walls  are  steeped  in  truth, 
and  each  room  speaks  it  in  its  own  peculiar  voice. 
What  is  that  truth  ?  Really  the  same  old  truth 
which  was  spoken  from  end  to  end  of  old  Palestine, 
that  house  of  Israel  which  had  heard  and  kept  so 
many  of  the  words  of  God.  The  necessity  and 
blessing  of  obedience.  The  old  truth  of  covenant 
between  man  and  God.  It  is  not  put  in  the  hard  old 
Jewish  way  as  it  speaks  to  you  out  of  the  walls  of 
your  Christian  home.  It  is  richened  and  deepened. 
It  speaks  as  something  essential  and  not  arbitrary, 
something  which  could  not  be  otherwise  than  as  it 
is ;  but  in  its  new  form  it  is  the  same  old  truth,  that 
man's  life  belongs  to  God,  and  that  there  is  no  true 
life  for  man  except  in  God,  and  that  man  lives  in 
God  only  by  loving  obedience.  It  may  be  that  in 
the  house  where  you  are  living  is  the  room  where 
you  were  born.  That  chamber  must  sometimes 
speak  to  you  of  the  mere  fact  of  your  life;  apart 
from  all  its  circumstances,  or  rather  gathering  all  its 
circumstances  into  the  one  great  fact,  the  voice  of 
God  speaking  to  you  from  those  walls  within  which 
your  life  began  to  be  must  say,  "  You  are,"  "  You 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  271 

live,"  in  such  a  tone  that  the  wondrousness  of  life, 
the  blessedness  of  life,  and  the  tie  between  all  life 
and  Plira  who  is  the  ever-living  and  the  all-creating 
one,  must  come  out  to  you  as  if  a  voice  that  you 
could  hear  proclaimed  them  in  your  ears.  Perhaps 
there  is  some  room  in  your  house  where  for  the  first 
time  you  faced  the  awful  mystery  of  death,  where  for 
the  first  time  you  watched  that  slow,  sure,  gentle, 
irresistible  untwisting  of  the  golden  cord  and  saw 
mortality  fade  into  immortality  before  your  very 
eyes.  Can  that  room  ever  be  silent  to  you  again  ? 
There  is  where  God  gave  you  at  once  the  keenest 
pain  and  the  sublimest  triumph  over  pain  that  the 
human  heart  can  know.  There  He  taught  you  at 
once  the  necessity  and  the  blessedness  of  submission. 
Or  perhaps  there  is  some  room  where  you  yourself 
went  up  once  and  looked  in  silence  into  the  very 
door  of  death.  Some  Hezekiah  chamber  where  the 
message  seemed  to  come  to  you  that  you  must  die, 
and  where  you  prayed  to  God  that  you  might  live, 
and  told  Him  how  you  would  give  the  spared  life  all 
to  Him.  Or  perhaps  some  solemn  room  where  your 
new  birth  came  to  you,  where  you  fought  out  the 
struggle  of  your  soul's  life,  where  at  last  you  knew 
that  you,  risen  as  if  from  very  death,  had  indeed  be- 
gun to  live  not  for  yourself,  but  unto  Him  who  died 
for  you  and  rose  again.  The  rooms  where  your 
children  have  been  born.  The  room  where  you  first 
found  yourself  rich,  the  room  where  you  first  found 
yourself  poor,  the  room  of  your  friendships,  the  room 
of  your  daily  bread,  all  of  these,  and  around  them 
the  whole   house  with  its  associations  of  quiet,  un- 


272  THE    STONE    OF    SHEOHEM. 

eventful,  but  most  significant  years.  They  liave  ail 
"  heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord  which  He  spake  unto 
you ;  "  and  if  you  have  ears  to  hear,  they  all  "  bear 
witness  unto  you  lest  you  deny  your  God." 

Remember  that  the  more  rich  and  full  of  experi- 
ences your  life  is,  the  more  the  house  you  live  in 
and  all  its  circumstances  and  accidents  will  grow 
rich.  I  do  not  wonder  that  there  are  some  to  whom 
all  that  I  have  been  saying  will  seem  unmeaning 
and  absurd.  No  voices  come  out  of  their  homes, 
because  no  genuine  deep  life  is  really  lived  within 
them.  This  surely  is  part  of  what  is  meant  by  the 
fickleness  and  transitoriness  of  our  ordinary  life. 
Men  flee  from  one  home  to  another,  from  one  conti- 
nent to  another,  from  one  occupation  to  another, 
not  because  anything  drives  them  from  the  old,  not 
because  anything  really  valuable  and  intelligible 
draws  them  in  the  new,  but  because  they  have  not 
lived  deeply  enough  to  make  themselves  associations, 
because  they  have  felt  nothing  deeply  and  thought 
nothing  deeply,  enjoyed  nothing  intensely,  suffered 
nothing  very  keenly  in  the  old  home  or  the  old  oc- 
cupation, and  so  any  morning  they  can  pack  up  and 
be  off  with  hardly  a  suspicion  of  a  pang.  Your  life 
cannot  be  frivolous  or  vulgar  unless  you  are  frivolous 
or  vulgar.  He  who  complains  of  his  circumstances 
really  complains  of  himself  and  is  his  own  accuser. 
He  who  tires  of  his  house  really  tires  of  himself. 
The  restlessness  that  comes  of  a  divine  desire  presses 
deeper  down  into  the  rock  on  which  it  stands  to  find 
the  springs  of  life.  It  keeps  you  where  you  are. 
The  restlessness  that  comes  of  human  thirst  wanders 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  273 

over  the  surface  of  the  earth,  filling  its  dipper  from 
every  little  pool  caught  in  the  hollows  of  the  rocks.  It 
sends  you  all  abroad.  One  is  sure  that  all  increase 
of  depth  in  life  must  bring  a  greater  stability  of 
life,  fill  our  towns  with  more  hereditary  and  ances- 
tral homes,  and  give  more  sacredness  to  the  whole 
character  of  a  community. 

I  cannot  help  saying  how  the  same  thing  is  true 
of  churches,  and  of  the  easy  wandering  from  church 
to  church  of  which  we  see  so  much.  He  who  has 
lived  deeply  in  anj^  church  connection,  he  whose 
church  building  and  whose  pew  are  bound  up  with 
the  most  profound  experiences  that  man  can  ever 
undergo,  may  change  his  old  church  for  a  new,  but 
if  he  does,  it  wdll  be  a  solemn,  thoughtful  act  done 
only  under  the  certain  stress  of  duty  and  true  spirit- 
ual conviction.  The  church  where  he  has  repented 
and  trusted  and  grown  in  grace,  the  church  where  he 
has  met  Christ,  where  he  has  known  himself,  will  be 
his  home,  from  which  only  some  deepest  change  can 
separate  him.  It  may  come,  for  there  are  demands  of 
duty  to  one's  soul  which  cut  through  all  associations 
and  compel  a  man  to  leave  the  dearest  things  behind. 
But  such  a  change  from  church  to  church  as  that  is 
wholly  different  from  the  flippant  and  unmeaning 
changes  which  show,  not  so  much  what  the  new 
church  may  hope  to  do  for  the  wanderer,  as  what  the 
deserted  church  has  failed  to  do. 

It  ought  to  be  harder  and  harder  for  men  to  do 
wrong  the  older  that  they  grow.  For  all  around 
them  ought  to  gather  the  restraining  power  of  associ- 
ations.    The  voice  of  the  Lord  ought  to  speak  out 


274  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

of  more  and  more  of  the  things  about  us,  bearing  a 
continual  witness  to  us,  lest  we  "  deny  our  God."  Re- 
member that  to  deny  our  God  is  not  to  be  what  men 
call  sceptical.  It  is  not  to  blaspheme.  It  is  simply 
to  live  as  if  there  were  no  God,  —  no  God  to  help 
us,  no  God  to  be  responsible  to,  no  God  for  us  to  trust 
and  love.  There  is  no  man  who  does  not  know  that 
danger,  who  does  not  feel  it  every  day.  In  your 
schools,  in  your  homes,  in  your  stores,  everywhere, 
the  terrible  danger  of  denying  God  !  Against  that 
danger  God  bears  ever  fresh  and  present  witness  of 
Himself  in  your  hearts.  Every  morning  His  voice 
is  new.  Every  evening  Hid  voice  pursues  you  to 
your  rest.  But  besides  this  direct  continual  pres- 
ence, there  is  this  other  testimony  of  Himself  which 
I  have  spoken  of  to-day.  He  fills  the  world  of  associa- 
tion with  utterances  of  Himself.  Oh,  as  we  grow  in 
life,  the  world  ought  to  be  becoming  to  us  more  and 
more  full  of  monumental  pictures  of  human  noble- 
ness, patience,  self-sacrifice,  courage,  meekness,  so 
that  we  shall  be  more  and  more  sure  that  goodness 
and  heroism  are  possible  for  man.  It  ought  to  be  al- 
ways more  and  more  full  of  the  recollection  of  times 
when  we  ourselves  mounted  to  enthusiastic  faith  and 
earnest  resolution  and  unselfish  action,  so  that  it  shall 
be  less  and  less  possible  for  us  to  hide  behind  a  low 
conception,  a  low  expectation  of  ourselves.  It  ought 
to  grow  bright  with  more  and  more  luminous  points 
that  never  cease  to  burn  with  the  memory  of  some 
certain  experience  of  the  deep,  deep,  dear  love  of 
God.  These  are  the  things  which  men  are  tempted 
to  doubt  and  to  deny,  —  that  it  is  possible  for  men  to 


THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM.  275 

be  true  and  good,  that  each  man  is  himself  bound  to 
goodness  and  truth,  and  that  God  loves  us.  Believe 
these  really,  believe  these  constantly,  and  it  must  b© 
very  hard  to  sin.  Blessed  is  he  whose  life  fills  itself 
with  monumental  memories  on  which  these  truths 
are  graven  deep.  For  him  the  great  wide  open  plain 
of  life,  where  his  wandering  sight  and  steps  seemed 
lost,  narrows  itself  till  he  finds  himself  walking  be- 
tween the  shining  walls  of  righteousness  along  the 
certain  road  of  duty.  Less  and  less  does  he  seek  to 
wander.  Duty,  dear  for  itself  and  dear  for  the  mem. 
ories  that  hallow  it,  satisfies  him  and  inspires  him. 
The  past  is  to  him  not  burden,  but  wings  ;  and  when 
he  comes  to  God  at  last,  it  is  a  whole  lifetime  rich 
with  accumulated  thankfulness  that  he  lays  down  at 
the  Saviour's  feet. 

And  think  how  with  the  successive  generations  of 
mankind,  each  leaving  countless  new  monuments  of 
divine  love  and  human  possibility  upon  the  earth,  the 
earth  itself  is  growing  richer  every  year.  Every 
year  some  new  valley  gets  its  consecration  from  some 
new  soul's  struggle  with  sin.  Every  year  some  new 
mountain-top  burns  with  another  soul's  rapture  of 
salvation.  We  read  of  the  promise  of  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth  wherein  righteousness 
shall  dwell.  Are  not  the  heavens  and  the  earth  ever 
growing  new,  newer,  and  more  full  of  righteousness 
every  day  ?  When  the  time  shall  come  that  every 
star  in  heaven  and  every  stone  on  earth  shall  be  vocal 
with  some  word  of  God  which  it  has  heard,  and  in 
their  midst  shall  live  the  race  of  men,  no  longer  deaf 
and  obstinate,  but  quick-eared   to  hear  and  loving- 


276  THE    STONE    OF    SHECHEM. 

hearted  to  obey  those  words  as  they  come  crowding 
in,  making  the  air  sacred  on  every  side  —  when  that 
shall  come  —  which  the  world's  best  pictures  of  Chris- 
tian life  now  suggest  and  prophesy — shall  not  the 
promise  then  have  been  fulfilled,  and  the  "New 
Heavens  and  the  New  Earth  wherein  dwelleth  right- 
eousness "  be  a  sublime  reality  ? 

What  is  it  possible  for  us  to  do?  These  two  things, 
oh,  my  friends  : 

First,  to  hear  every  voice  of  God  that  speaks  to  us 
out  of  any  consecrated  bit  of  this  old  earth  where 
men  have  lived  so  long,  and  to  learn  from  them  all 
these  first  truths  of  human  life,  that  man  can  be  very 
good  and  brave,  that  we  ourselves  are  debtors  to  all 
our  old  resolutions  and  to  the  loftiest  moments  of 
our  past,  and  that  God  loves  us. 

Second,  to  live  such  lives  so  true,  so  deep,  so  rich, 
so  pure,  that  the  world  shall  get  new  monuments  by 
us,  that  in  some  little  circle  where  we  lived  the  re- 
sult of  our  living,  when  the  certain  day  comes  and 
we  pass  on  to  other  unseen  fields  of  service,  may  be 
that  some  stone  which  our  lives  touched  shall  be  a 
witness  to  the  men  and  women  whom  we  leave  be- 
hind us,  because  it  has  heard  the  words  of  the  Lord 
that  He  spake  through  our  lives,  that  it  may  be  a 
witness  unto  them  to  help  them,  to  restrain  them,  to 
inspire  them  when  they  are  tempted  to  deny  their 
God. 

Certainly  every  life  to  which  blessings  like  these 
are  given  is  a  rich  success. 


XVI. 

THE  NEARNESS   OF  CHRIST. 

"  Howbeit,  we  know  this  man  whence  He  is  :  but  when  Christ 
Cometh,  no  man  knoweth  whence  He  is."  —  John  vii.  27. 

Very  different  and  contradictory  are  the  demands 
which  men  make  of  that  to  which  they  are  moved  to 
give  their  reverence  and  service.  Most  men  ask  of 
their  religion  that  it  shall  be  familiar,  that  it  shall 
have  to  do  with  daily  life,  that  it  shall  seem  to  issue 
from  the  heart  of  common  things  and  clothe  those 
things  with  a  light  which  makes  them  radiant. 
They  dread  mystery.  They  hate  to  be  bidden  to  lift 
up  their  eyes  and  to  look  far  away.  This  verse  out 
of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  has  just  the  other  story. 
In  it  the  men  of  Galilee  are  speaking  and  telling 
why  Christ  is  not  acceptable  to  them.  He  is  too 
familiar.  They  knew  him  from  His  childhood. 
He  has  come  out  of  a  household  which  they  have  seen 
beside  them  all  their  lives.  "  We  know  this  man, 
whence  He  is."  All  this  seemed  to  make  it  incredi- 
ble to  them  that  He  should  be  the  Christ  for  whom 
their  people  have  been  waiting  all  these  years.  The 
fulfilment  of  a  hundred  prophecies,  the  answer  to  a 
million  prayers,  it  could  not  be  that  when  at  last  He 
came  it  should  be  thus.  The  sun  had  shone  in  glory, 
the  mighty  clouds  had  gathered,  and  the  luxuriant 


278  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

rain  poured  down.  They  had  stood  and  waited  for 
a  worthy  issue  of  it  all,  and  here  came  quietly,  pierc- 
ing through  the  sod  which  the  sun  had  mellowed,  a 
little  flower  which  the  rain  had  fed.  Where  was  the 
chariot  of  the  skies  ?  Where  was  the  awful  mystery  ? 
It  was  all  too  simple,  too  familiar.  "  When  Christ 
Cometh  no  man  knoweth  whence  He  is.  But  we 
know  this  man  whence  He  is.  This  cannot  be  the 
Christ !  " 

There  is  one  distinction  in  the  world's  geography 
which  comes  immediately  to  our  minds  when  we 
thus  state  the  different  thoughts  and  desires  of  men 
concerning  their  religion.  We  remember  how  the 
whole  world  is  in  general  divided  into  two  hemi- 
spheres upon  this  matter.  One  half  of  the  world, 
the  great  dim  East,  is  mystic.  It  insists  upon  not  see- 
ing anything  too  clearly.  Make  any  one  of  the 
great  ideas  of  life  distinct  and  clear,  and  immediately 
it  seems  to  the  Oriental  to  be  untrue.  He  has  an 
instinct  which  tells  him  that  the  vastest  thoughts  are 
too  vast  for  the  human  mind,  and  that  if  they  are 
made  to  present  themselves  in  forms  of  statement 
which  the  human  mind  can  comprehend,  their  nature 
is  violated  and  their  strength  is  lost. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Occidental,  the  man  of  the 
West,  demands  clearness  and  is  impatient  with  mystery. 
He  loves  a  definite  statement  as  much  as  his  brother 
of  the  East  dislikes  it.  He  insists  on  knowing  what 
the  eternal  and  infinite  forces  mean  to  his  personal 
life,  how  they  will  make  him  personally  happier  and 
better,  almost  how  they  will  build  the  house  over  his 
head,  and  cook  the  dinner  on  his  hearth.    This  is  the 


THE    NEARNESS    OP    CHRIST.  279 

difference  between  the  East  and  the  West,  between 
man  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  and  man  on  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi.  Plenty  of  exceptions  of 
course  there  are.  Mystics  in  Boston  and  St.  Louis. 
Hard-headed  men  of  facts  in  Bombay  and  Calcutta. 
The  two  great  dispositions  cannot  be  shut  off  from 
one  another  by  an  ocean  or  a  range  of  mountains. 
In  some  nations  and  places,  as  for  instance  among 
the  Jews  and  in  our  own  New  England,  they  notably 
commingle.  But  in  general  they  thus  divide  the 
world  between  them.  The  East  lives  in  the  moon- 
light of  mystery,  the  "West  in  the  sunlight  of  scien- 
tific fact.  The  East  cries  out  to  the  Eternal  for 
vague  impulses.  The  West  seizes  the  present  with 
light  hands,  and  will  not  let  it  go  till  it  has  furnished  it 
with  reasonable,  intelligible  motives.  Each  misunder- 
stands, distrusts,  and  in  large  degree  despises  the  other. 
But  the  two  hemispheres  together,  and  not  either  one 
by  itself,  make  up  the  total  world. 

But  of  course  such  geographical  suggestions  are 
most  immediately  interesting  as  they  represent  what 
reappears  in  every  man.  There  is  an  east  and  a 
west  in  each  of  us.  In  one  hemisphere  of  our  being 
each  of  us  is  mystic  and  transcendental,  and  in  the 
other  hemisphere  of  our  being  each  of  us  is  limited 
and  practical  and  concrete,  demanding  the  tangible 
and  clear.  No  man  is  destitute  of  either  side.  You 
think  you  have  found  the  man  in  whom  one  side  or 
the  other  is  totally  absent ;  but  watch  him  long  enough 
and  some  day  the  missing  hemisphere  catches  a  flash 
of  light  and  shows  that  it  is  there,  little  as  you 
dreamed  of  it,  stoutly  as  he  may  have  denied  that  it 


280  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

was  there  himself.  The  problem  of  every  man's 
character  and  career  is  what  the  coming  problem  of 
the  world's  life  evidently  is,  how  these  two  halves, 
the  east  and  the  west,  are  to  be  proportioned  and 
related  to  each  other,  and  into  what  sort  of  union 
they  may  come  to  make  something  greater  and  more 
human  than  either  of  them  is  by  itself.  The  foot  set 
on  one  present  spot  of  present  earth,  and  the  eye 
which  ranges  the  world  of  stars,  to  see  which  way 
the  foot  should  walk.  Imagination  which  questions 
the  remotest  possibilities  and  prudence,  which 
studies  the  immediate  conditions.  Hope  which  per- 
ishes if  it  defines  itself,  and  Duty  which  must  know 
the  very  thing  which  now  needs  to  be  done.  It  is 
the  proportion  and  relationship  of  these  in  a  man's 
life  which  mark  what  sort  of  a  man  he  is.  Every 
education  of  a  man's  life,  every  consciousness  which 
a  man  has  of  himself,  every  religion  which  seeks  to 
be  a  man's  illumination,  and  leaves  out  either  side  of 
a  man's  nature,  is  partial  and  so  false.  The  world's 
religions  have  failed,  and  are  failing  here  to-day. 
They  have  been  too  much  either  mystic  exaltations 
or  hard  methods  of  economy.  Surely  there  is  some- 
thing better  which  they  might  be  by  being  both. 
Such  the  complete  religion  must  be  when  it  is  per- 
fectly revealed. 

The  perfect  religion  which  will  do  its  work  for  the 
whole  human  nature  —  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
Man,  which,  as  Jesus  said,  must  be  "  as  the  lightning 
which  Cometh  out  of  the  east  and  shineth  even  unto 
the  west"  —  will  comprehend  within  itself  all  that  the 
partial  religions  ever  had  of  good.     It  will   be  no 


THE    NEAKNESS    OF    CHRIST.  281 

mere  compromise.  The  base  meetings  of  ideas  or 
men  are  in  the  region  of  compromise.  Their  noble 
meetings  are  in  the  region  of  comprehension.  Com- 
promise leaves  out  the  essence  and  strength  of  two 
truths  and  then  makes  a  barren  union  of  the  color- 
less remainders.  Comprehension  unites  the  spiritual 
substance  of  both  with  a  larger  truth  than  either, 
and  then  lets  the  new  unity  create  its  new  form  with 
perfect  freedom.  One  grows  to  believe  in  methods 
of  compromise  less  and  less,  in  methods  of  compre- 
hension more  and  more.  We  talk  of  reconciling  one 
truth  with  another.  How  imjiertinent  it  is  !  Who  are 
we  that  we  should  thrust  in  our  petty  persons  be- 
tween Kings,  and  think  that  we  can  make  them  know 
each  other?  Who  are  we  that  we  should  dare  to 
undertake  to  tell  majestic  truths  what  each  of  them 
must  give  up  in  order  that  the  other  shall  not  be 
offended?  Such  reconciliations  by  compromise  al- 
ways fail.  No !  let  us  give  the  great  truths  souls  and 
lives  large  enough  to  meet  in,  and  they  will  know 
each  other  without  our  help,  and  mingle  as  two 
kingly  streams  mingle  their  water  in  the  sunshine 
to  make  the  yet  more  royal  river. 

Here,  then,  are  these  two  truths,  both  of  them  cer- 
tainly true.  One  of  them  is  that  religion  is  sublime 
and  far  away,  and  outgoes  our  life.  The  other,  that 
religion  is  familiar  and  close  at  hand.  One  is  for- 
ever looking  for  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  the 
clouds  of  Heaven.  The  other  is  always  craving 
the  presence  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  at  the  fireside 
of  the  home.  Each  truth  demands  assertion.  Each 
grows  restless  when  the  other  seems  to  be  taking 


282  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

possession  of  the  field  and  monopolizing  Christi- 
anity. 

When  we  ask  after  the  comprehensive  conception 
of  religion  which  shall  freely  include  both  these 
truths,  at  once  we  recognize  that  before  we  can 
get  hold  of  it  we  must  first  grasp  more  fully  than  we 
do  the  largeness,  the  many-sidedness,  of  the  nature 
of  man.  Religion  is  for  man.  To  discuss  religion 
apart  from  man,  as  if  it  were  a  system  of  abstract 
truth,  is  futile.  It  is  not  a  religious  sj^stem,  but  a 
religious  man,  that  we  are  after.  Religion  is  a  life,  a 
nature,  a  being,  not  a  system  or  a  law.  Therefore 
to  understand  religion  you  must  understand  man  ; 
and  to  see  how  the  great  ultimate  religion  must 
freely  comprehend  both  of  the  two  truths  which  have 
claimed  religious  thought  by  turns,  we  must  first 
take  in  the  largeness  of  human  nature  wherein  both 
of  these  thoughts  are  embodied,  and  which  the  great 
perfect  religion,  when  it  comes,  must  fully  satisfy. 

And  now,  of  all  the  facts  concerning  man,  none  is 
more  manifest  than  this,  that  in  his  nature  are  two 
elements,  to  his  life  there  are  two  sides.  One  is 
familiar  and  domestic,  the  other  is  sublime  and 
transcendental.  Look  at  him !  See  how  he  deals 
both  with  the  earth  and  with  the  heavens.  With 
the  earth  which  is  his  daily  home.  He  treads  upon 
its  soil ;  he  delves  into  its  bosom  ;  he  plants  his  seed 
in  it  and  eats  the  fruit  that  it  produces ;  he  drinks 
of  its  streams ;  he  sails  upon  its  oceans  ;  he  builds 
his  house  upon  its  plains ;  he  trades  in  its  wealth ; 
he  flourishes  or  fails  according  to  its  changing  for- 
tunes ;  and  then,  while  he  is  walking  on  the  earth, 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  285 

all  the  while  his  head  is  among  the  stars,  and  his 
sight  goes  far  beyond  them.  His  deeds  are  clear, 
definite,  concrete,  but  his  motives  go  out  into  regions 
where  he  cannot  follow  them.  His  principles,  which 
come  to  the  most  commonplace  applications,  are 
themselves  but  reenactments  of  the  foundations  of 
the  universe.  The  lightning  strikes  this  special,  hard, 
visible,  tangible  piece  of  timber,  and  sets  it  into 
flame.  But  the  lightning  was  born  in  the  myste- 
rious bosom  of  a  cloud  which  no  eye  can  penetrate. 
The  sunlight  shines  upon  the  tools  of  man's  most 
ordinary  task ;  but  the  sun  from  which  the  sunlight 
comes  is  a  deep  world  of  fire  which  withers  and  flings 
back  his  gaze.  Everywhere  man  is  this  double  thing. 
The  living  which  he  makes  is  narrow,  practical,  pro- 
«aic.  The  life  which  he  lives  is  a  fragment  of  the 
life  of  God.  Now  he  is  busy  with  the  multiplication 
table  to  count  up  his  income  or  his  rent ;  and  now 
he  is  on  the  summit  of  Sinai  with  Moses,  taking 
the  tables  of  the  Eternal  Law  out  of  the  hands  of 
God. 

I  do  not  say  that  these  two  elements  of  his  nature, 
these  two  sides  of  his  life,  stand  wholly  separate  from 
one  another,  as  they  appear  when  I  thus  describe 
them.  It  is  not  so.  They  are  in  closest  connection. 
The  familiar  task  is  always  being  elevated  and  en- 
larged by  the  greatness  of  the  infinite  principle. 
And  the  infinite  principle  is  always  being  concen- 
trated and  embodied  in  the  familiar  task.  The 
dream  and  tlie  duty,  the  prayer  and  the  bargain,  are 
always  claiming  each  other  as  portions  of  the  one 
same  life.     But  do  you  not  know  how  they  still  are 


284  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

two,  and  how  strangely  they  divide  your  human  life 
between  them? 

It  is  one  of  the  first  results  of  this  fact  concerning 
man,  that  he  is  to  himself  at  once  intelligible  and 
mysterious,  mysterious  and  intelligible.  "  As  un- 
known and  yet  well  known,"  said  St.  Paul  about 
himself ;  and  he  might  have  said  it  about  any  man. 
Do  you  not  know  what  I  mean  ?  Are  there  not 
moments  in  your  life  when  it  seems  as  if  you  under- 
stood and  knew  yourself  through  and  through?  You 
have  listened  to  this  clank  of  your  machinery  so  long, 
that  you  know  every  sound  it  makes.  You  have 
handled  it  and  watched  it,  and  are  entirely  familiar 
with  the  way  in  which  every  shaft  of  habit  moves, 
and  how  each  toothed  wheel  fits  into  the  next  toothed 
wheel,  and  what  you  did  yesterday  gave  birth  to 
what  you  are  doing  to-day,  and  will  have  its  grand- 
child in  what  you  are  to  do  to-morrow.  And  just 
then,  when  everything  seemed  perfectly  transparent, 
has  the  distance  never  opened  round  you,  and  deep- 
ened and  deepened  till  you  felt  that  if  there  was  any- 
thing which  you  did  not  know,  it  was  yourself  —  this 
self  which  had  to  do  with  the  ends  of  the  universe 
and  the  eternity  behind  you  and  the  eternity  before? 
"Know  myself!"  You  say,  "  Indeed  I  do,"  grasping 
your  own  warm,  hard  flesh.  "  Am  I  not  this,  which 
lives  thus  ?  Why  should  I  think  myself  mysterious  ?  " 
And  then  instantly,  "  Know  myself !  God  forbid ! 
Who  am  I  that  I  should  enter  into  the  bosom  of  the 
Eternal  purpose,  and  study  there  what  only  there  has 
real  and  final  being  ?  Let  me  stand  in  awe  before  my 
unknown  self  and  wonder."     Poor  and  mangled  is 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  285 

the  life  which  has  not  thus  seemed  both  to  under- 
stand and  to  be  ignorant  about  itself.  It  must  be 
either  useless  or  visionless. 

And  now,  to  come  at  last  to  the  point  for  which 
all  this  long  study  has  been  undertaken.  This  nature 
of  man  decrees  the  necessary  nature  of  his  religion. 
Here  is  man,  familiar  and  mysterious,  known  and 
unknown  to  himself  and  to  his  brethren.  What 
must  the  Christ  be  who  shall  be  that  man's  Saviour  ? 
Must  He  not  come  to  man  in  both  parts  of  his  double 
life  ?  Must  He  not  speak  to  man  here,  where  all  is 
definite  and  plain,  here  by  his  work-bench  and  his 
fireside ;  here  where  man  needs  a  brother's  sym- 
pathy; here  where  duty  must  be  just  as  clear  as 
daylight ;  here  where  man  must  know  whether  he  is 
doing  right  or  wrong  by  unmistakable  words  of  re- 
buke or  praise  spoken  directly  in  his  listening  ear  ? 
And  then,  no  less,  is  it  not  true  that  in  the  farthest 
depths  of  his  own  mystery  to  which  he  can  go,  man 
still  must  find  Christ  waiting  and  hear  Christ  speak  ? 
Out  of  the  heart  of  the  unknown  must  come  the 
Christ  he  knows  so  well,  saying,  "  I  am  here  too." 
He  who  is  Son  of  Man  must  be  also  Son  of  God. 

It  is  not  possible  to  lose  either  of  those  hemi- 
spheres of  His  power  and  not  lose  Christ.  Lose  one, 
and  He  is  a  vague  wind  haunting  the  universe,  dis- 
turbing, not  directing,  us.  Lose  the  other,  and  He 
is  a  prudent  counsellor  who  has  nothing  to  say  to 
our  highest  aspirations,  and  no  answer  to  our  deepest 
questions.  Keep  both,  and  He  is  the  whole  Christ, 
the  Alpha  and  Omega,  so  enfolding  and  outgoing 
any  possible  reach  of  our  existence,  that  we  dare  go 


286  THE    NEAR]SrESS    OF    CHRIST. 

forth  to  our  farthest  possibility,  sure  that  we  shall 
find  Him  there,  and  dare  come  in  to  our  most  famil- 
iar domesticity,  sure  that  there,  too.  He  will  be 
present  with  His  sympathy.  His  understanding,  and 
His  help. 

I  read  the  Gospels,  and  this  Christ  is  there.  Who 
is  this  that  feeds  the  hungry  crowd  at  the  lakeside, 
and  that  same  night  comes  walking  on  the  water  to 
His  frightened  followers  ?  Nay,  who  in  the  very  feed- 
ing of  the  crowd  is  close  to  their  human  hunger  on 
one  side,  and  close  to  the  heart  and  power  of  God 
upon  the  other?  Did  any  soul  come  near  Him  and 
not  hear  at  once  the  voice  of  the  brother  Jew  and 
the  voice  of  the  celestial  wisdom  in  the  tones,  so  in- 
timate and  yet  so  strange,  which  fell  upon  his  ear? 

I  open  the  story  of  the  Christian  Church,  and 
there  too  is  this  Christ.  He  is  the  rule  of  life  and 
the  infinite  satisfaction  of  the  soul  through  all  the 
Christian  ages.  When  the  Church  has  allowed  Him 
or  bidden  Him  to  be  only  the  one  or  only  the  other, 
she  has  lost  His  power.  Both  periods  there  have 
been  in  her  history.  Sometimes  she  has  made  her 
Christ  a  beautiful,  impracticable  vision.  Sometimes 
she  has  harnessed  Him  to  human  machineries,  and 
made  Him  almost  a  drudge  ;  but  always  He  has 
claimed  the  fulness  of  his  Saviourship,  and  been,  in 
spite  of  her,  at  once  the  known  and  unknown,  the 
familiar  friend  and  the  transcendent  inspiration  of 
the  Church's  life.  May  the  Christ  of  the  Gospels 
and  the  Christ  of  the  Church  be  our  Christ,  my 
friends,  our  whole  Christ,  in  all  the  fulness  of  His 
Christhood ! 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  287 

I  have  spoken  thus  of  the  double  presentation  of 
the  Christian  faith,  and  we  have  seen  how  the  result 
is  that  dangers  present  themselves  on  either  side. 
It  is  the  danger  upon  one  side  only  which  our  text 
records,  and  of  that  I  would  now  speak  exclusively 
in  the  remainder  of  my  sermon.  The  Jews  com- 
plained of  Jesus  that  He  was  too  familiar,  that  there 
was  too  little  of  distance  and  mystery  about  Him. 
"  We  know  this  man  whence  He  is."  Is  not  our  first 
thought  about  their  complaint  this :  that  it  shows 
how  little  in  earnest  they  were  ?  If  they  had  really 
been  in  earnest,  the  nearer  they  could  have  got  to 
Christ,  the  closer  they  could  have  brought  Him  to 
themselves,  the  more  familiar  He  could  have  seemed, 
the  more  they  would  have  rejoiced.  While  your 
faith  is  a  subject  of  speculation,  or  an  object  of  per- 
sonal pride,  you  are  ready  enough  to  throne  it  in 
some  far-off  splendor,  and  drape  the  curtains  of  dark- 
ness around  it  where  it  sits ;  but  when  the  time 
comes  that  you  need  it,  that  you  must  have  it  or  you 
will  die,  then  you  cry  out  for  it  to  come  down  from 
its  high  seat  and  be  close  to  your  aching  want,  and 
open  to  you  the  very  secrets  of  its  inmost  being. 

Oh,  what  a  history  is  here  of  the  experience  of 
many  souls !  They  were  jealous  for  the  divinity  of 
Christ.  In  asserting  His  divinity  they  would  sepa- 
rate Him  from  the  sordidness  and  turmoil  of  our 
commonplace  existence.  They  would  make  Him 
different  in  sort  from  us.  They  would  deny  that  we 
could  know  Him  by  what  we  found  in  ourselves. 
And  then  some  day  there  came  the  stress  and  strain. 
The  commonplace  became  transfigured  and  became 


i:»»  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

tragical.  The  ordinary  human  incidents  —  birth, 
death,  success,  failure,  love,  hate,  aye  food,  and  drink, 
and  poverty,  and  wealth  —  were  things  of  spiritual 
criticalness.  And  then  their  Christ  could  no  longer 
sit  upon  a  distant  throne.  The  mystery  must  open  ; 
we  must  have  Him  here  and  now.  The  Son  of  God 
must  be  the  Son  of  Man.  We  must  know  by  our 
own  hearts  what  He  is.  His  pity,  and  patience,  and 
indignation,  and  delight  in  faithfulness,  whether  it 
succeed  or  fail,  must  be  revealed  to  us  by  these  same 
powers,  as  they  feebly  display  themselves  in  us.  We 
will  not  drag  Him  down,  but  our  whole  life  mounts 
up  and  claims  Him.  It  is  worthy  of  a  God,  and  so 
the  God  enters  into  it ;  and  lo  !  we  know  Him  whence 
He  is.  He  ceases  not  to  be  God,  but  He  is  Man,  all 
the  more  human  because  of  His  divinity. 

This  is  the  revelation,  and  the  light,  and  the 
change  which  has  come  to  countless  souls.  When 
they  intensely  needed  a  Christ  whom  they  could 
know,  then  the  Christ  whom  they  had  thought  it 
reverence  not  to  pretend  to  know,  revealed  Himself 
and  claimed  their  knowledge.  The  great  difference 
in  men's  theology  is  this :  To  one  man,  theology  is 
totally  different  from  life  ;  to  another  man,  theology 
is  the  culmination  and  fulfilment  of  life.  To  one 
man,  Deity  hovers  over  humanity  as  a  foreign 
heaven,  made  of  other  substance,  unintelligible  by 
any  sympathy  of  common  being;  to  another  man, 
Deity  underlies  humanity  as  the  earth  underlies  the 
countless  trees  which  grow  out  of  its  bosom,  bearing 
witness  of  what  it  is,  making  its  silent  qualities  vocal 
in  the  chorus  of  their  shooting  branches  and  whis- 


THE    NEARNESS    OP    CHRIST.  289 

pering  leaves.  Great,  infinitely  precious,  is  the  hour 
when  that  revelation  comes  to  a  young  man's  soul. 
Sometimes  in  sunny  stillness,  creeping  on  with  the 
bright  growth  of  gradual  life.  Sometimes  with  a 
sudden  tempest,  smiting  the  clouds  asunder  and 
letting  the  broad  light  pour  in.  Come  how  it  will, 
the  hour  when  a  young  man  knows  that  Christ 
wants  to  be  known  of  him,  that  all  his  life  is  full 
of  revelation  of  Christ  if  he  can  hear  it,  that  hour  is 
the  hour  of  his  new  birth,  henceforth  there  is  no 
common  or  unclean  for  him  —  Christ  is  glorious  in 
everything,  and  everything  is  glorious  in  Christ. 

Such  an  illumination  of  a  man's  Christianity,  of 
his  whole  thought  of  Christ,  when  it  has  once  come, 
runs  everywhere  ;  it  sends  its  power  through  all  he 
does  and  is.  The  close  association  of  Christ  with 
human  life  does  not  degrade  Christ,  but  exalts 
human  life,  because  Christ  is  stronger  than  life 
and  dominates  it.  See  one  or  two  places  in  which 
this  is  true. 

Sometimes  we  shrink  from  recognizing  that  Christ 
is  the  Saviour  of  society.  It  seems  to  make  Chris- 
tianity a  mere  police  force  if  we  say  that  men  live 
more  peaceably  with  one  another,  and  are  more 
thrifty,  and  more  independent,  and  more  helpful  to 
each  other  where  the  Christian  Church  is  thriving 
and  the  Christian  Gospel  is  earnestly  preached  and 
thoroughly  believed.  But  surely  such  a  feeling  as 
that  must  come  from  too  base  an  estimate  of  the 
value  of  a  community  and  of  its  best  life.  If  society 
is  sacred,  if  the  living  together  of  a  group  of  God's 
children  on  God's  earth  has  infinite  meaning  and 


290  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

infinite  issues,  then  that  Christ,  the  power  and  wis- 
dom of  God,  should  be  power  and  wisdom  in  society 
is  not  strange.  It  would  be  strange  and  dreadful 
if  He  did  not  come  to  it  and  purify  and  elevate  all 
its  life.  When  the  people  of  Nazareth  said,  "  He 
cannot  be  the  Christ,  for  He  is  one  of  us.  His 
brothers  and  sisters,  are  they  not  here  with  us  ?  "  it 
was  not  Christ,  but  Nazareth  and  brotherhood  and 
sisterhood,  that  they  were  dishonoring.  If  they  could 
have  seen  how  essentially  sacred  those  things  were, 
then  Christ  would  have  been  all  the  more  Christ 
because  of  His  sympathy  in  their  sacredness. 

And  so  of  your  own  personal  life.  You  say,  in 
some  moods,  "  What  can  Christ  care  for  my  tempta- 
tions and  my  struggles  ?  I  should  think  less  of  Him 
if  He  did  care  for  them.  Let  the  great  Master  lead 
the  army  and  lay  out  the  broad  campaign,  but  it  is 
not  work  of  His  to  be  going  up  and  down  among 
the  tents  seeing  how  it  fares  with  the  sick  soldiers, 
strengthening  the  cowards,  and  comforting  the 
lonely  hearts."  But  then,  perhaps,  the  fact  becomes 
indisputably  manifest  to  you  that  He  does  do  just 
that.  And  the  fact  that  He  does  do  it  brings  you 
revelation.  You  see  what  a  soul  is.  What  the  peril 
of  a  soul  is  in  the  light  of  Christ's  strange  watchful- 
ness for  it.  And  when  you  have  once  seen  that,  then 
the  watchfulness  is  strange  no  longer.  The  Cross  on 
which  Christ  dies  for  man  shows  man  that  man  is 
worth  dying  for.  So  the  Cross  makes  itself  credible, 
and  bows  the  sceptic,  proud  and  yet  humble,  at  its 
foot. 

And  even  of  things  less  critical  than  struggles  and 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  291 

temptations,  if,  indeed,  there  be  anything  in  which 
struggle  and  temptation  are  not  consciously  or  un- 
consciously included.     Does  it  disturb  your  thought 
of  Christ  when  you  ask  yourself  to  consider  whether 
he  cares  how  your  house  stands,  how  your  table  is 
spread,  how  your  trade  prospers,  whether   you  get 
or  miss  the  learning  which  you  aim  at,  whether  you 
gain  or  lose  the  game  you  play?    Ah,  is  not  the 
story  of  Christ  feeding  the  hungry  people  at  Gen- 
nesaret  a  true  part  of  the  Christian  Gospel?     Could 
you  tear  it  out  of  the  New  Testament,  and  have  the 
whole  Gospel  still?      Does   it   disturb   and  lessen? 
Does  it  not  confirm  and  enlarge  the  truth  of  Christ 
to  you  as  you  read  it  between  the  death  of  John  the 
Baptist  and  the  sermon  to  the  Pharisees  ?     "  He  was 
known   to   them   in   the   breaking  of  bread."     Re- 
member that.     You  must  know  what  you,  the  whole 
of  you,  are  to  Christ,  the  whole  of  Him.     And  then 
it  will  be  clear  how  even  your  comfort  and  your  joy 
concern  Him  —  how  He  wil)  care  for  them,  ready  still 
to   call  for  their  sacrifice  if  higher  things  demand, 
but  showing  you  His  Christhood  in  one  of  its  most 
precious  sides  as  He  sympathizes  with  those  interests 
which  make  so  large  a  portion  of  His  brethren's  lives. 
Even  in  the  great  question  of  the  soul's  forgiveness 
for  its  sins,  does  there  not  sometimes  come  misgiving? 
Does  it  not  sometimes  seem  as  if  men  thought  that 
God  would  be  greater  and  more  awful  if  He  did  not 
stoop  to  forgive  ?     Who  are  we  that  He  should  care 
for  us  ?     What  is  it  whether  we  enjoy  or  suffer,  that 
the  Infinite  Goodness  and  Happiness  should  go  out 
of  its  way  to  save  us  from  the  consequence  of  our 


292  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

iniquity  ?  The  heatlien  deity  who  sits  sublime  and 
watches  while  things  take  their  resistless  course, 
Nature  pitiless  in  all  her  bounty,  these  sometimes 
seem  the  types  of  grandeur,  and  all  that  is  different 
from  them  has  a  touch  of  weakness  in  it.  Then 
comes  Christ  with  His  revelation  to  the  heart  which 
listens  and  is  convinced.  "  Lo  !  "  He  says,  "  God  does 
care  for  man,  and  is  most  God  when  He  cares  most 
tenderly.  Lo  !  pity  is  not  weakness :  it  is  strength." 
He  lets  us  see  the  purpose  of  forgiveness,  which  is 
not  release  from  punishment  and  pain,  but  entrance 
into  life,  and  shows  us  how  well  worth  forgiving  man 
is,  by  showing  us  what  man  forgiven  may  become. 

Thus  everywhere  Christ  comes  to  man's  commonest 
and  most  familiar  needs,  and  there,  in  them,  bears 
witness  of  His  power.  How  shall  that  make  us 
think  of  Him?  Shall  it  make  Him  seem  less  than 
God's  anointed  ?  "  As  for  this  man,  we  know  whence 
He  is ;  but  when  Christ  cometh,  no  man  knoweth." 
That  will  depend,  as  I  think  that  we  have  seen,  on 
how  man  seems  to  us.  If  he  is  mysterious  in  his 
very  nature,  then  the  mystery  of  the  Christ  is  not 
lost  in  the  Christ's  entrance  on  man's  homeliest 
estate.  Did  those  Jews  know  of  Jesus,  as  they  said 
they  did,  "whence  He  was"?  Ought  not  His  birth 
and  life  among  them  to  have  so  revealed  to  them  the 
essential  wonder  of  birth  and  life  that  they  should 
have  willingly  accepted  His  and  stood  in  awe  before 
their  own  ?  Is  not  this  the  whole  lesson  of  the  In  ■ 
carnation,  that  when  man  is  himself  God  can  dwell 
in  him  ? 

If  you  knew  the  hand  which  fed  the  child  Shake- 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  293 

speare,  would  you  not  honor  it  ?  Would  you  not 
know  that  to  have  been  allowed  to  minister  to  the 
humblest  wants  of  that  sublime  nature  was  a  privi- 
lege which  king  or  queen  need  not  refuse  ?  It  was 
to  help  to  make  possible  Hamlet  and  Macbeth ;  and 
the  real  wonder  of  Shakespeare  was  not  that  he  was 
Shakespeare,  but  that  he  was  man.  Be  sure  that  you 
mount  up  to  Christ  by  gaining  His  view  of  yourself, 
and  that  you  do  not  drag  Him  down  to  yourself  by 
your  selfishness,  and  then  you  may  freely  claim  Him 
in  your  commonest  life,  and  bid  Him  do,  and  honor 
Him  for  doing,  the  work  which  He  craves  and  delights 
in  when  He  says,  "I  am  among  you  as  He  that 
serveth." 

I  know  full  well  how  all  this  doctrine  may  appear, 
how  it  has  often  appeared,  to  many  men ;  how  it  has 
seemed  as  if  we  made  for  ourselves  a  Christ  out  of 
our  own  necessities,  and  said,  "  He  must  be  this, 
because  this  is  what  I  need."  People  have  said, 
"Ah,  you  believe  in  Christ  because  you  want  to. 
He  comes  not  out  of  the  certainty  of  demon- 
strated truth,  but  out  of  your  own  fancies  con- 
cerning your  own  wants.  You  think  you  must  have 
Him,  and  so  you  bid  Him  be."  I  know  the  delusion 
which  those  words  expose,  and  yet  I  gladly  accept 
the  account  which  those  words  give  of  at  least  one  of 
the  ways  in  which  Christ  comes  to  the  soul.  It  is 
because  the  soul  needs  Him  that  it  finds  Him.  There 
is  no  revelation  from  the  sky  which  could  bring  Him 
to  our  knowledge  if  the  heart  with  conscious  want 
did  not  demand  the  very  salvation  which  He  brings. 
I  will  be  studiously  on  my  guard  not  to  mistake  the 


294  THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST. 

cravings  of  my  nature  for  the  voice  of  the  coming 
Christ,  but  I  will  not  silence  those  cravings  of  my 
nature  when  they  welcome  the  coming  Christ,  —  I 
will  bid  them  speak,  I  will  listen  for  God's  answer  to 
them,  and  when  Christ  does  come  it  shall  make  the 
witness  of  His  coming  perfectly  conclusive  and  com- 
plete that  it  is  not  merely  in  the  clouds  of  heaven, 
but  through  the  worn  and  torn  avenues  of  my  con- 
scious human  necessities,  that  He  comes. 

Has  He  come  so  to  you,  my  friend?  Do  you 
believe  in  Jesus  Christ  to-day,  not  simply  because  of 
the  great  splendid  evidences  which  all  the  world  can 
read,  not  merely  because  of  the  trumpet-voice  of 
Christian  history  and  the  convincing  splendor  of  the 
life  of  miracle,  but  because  of  the  witness  which  He 
has  borne  to  your  own  soul  in  His  answer  to  your 
soul's  own  needs?  Do  you  believe  in  Him  because 
when  you  wanted  comfort  He  comforted  you, 
and  when  you  wanted  wisdom  He  enlightened  you, 
and  when  you  were  a  coward  He  made  you  brave,  and 
when  you  were  weak  He  made  you  strong?  Do 
not  distrust  that  evidence.  It  is  good  proof.  When 
Christ  comes  out  of  Nazareth  it  is  not  Christ  that  is 
dishonored,  but  Nazareth  that  is  glorified.  Let  your 
whole  nature  glow  and  burn  with  the  mysterious 
capacity  which  it  has  shown  to  need  and  long  for 
Christ,  and  then  accept  Christ  because,  first  having 
made  your  nature  fit  to  long  for  Him,  He  has  then 
rejoiced  to  satisfy  your  nature  with  Himself. 

Other  truths  about  Christ  there  are  which  we  will 
preach  on  other  days.  I  have  tried  to  preach  this 
truth  to-day,  that  no  familiarity  of  religion,  no  pres- 


THE    NEARNESS    OF    CHRIST.  295 

entation  of  it  as  a  regulative  force,  no  offer  by  Christ 
of  Himself  as  the  friend  of  daily  life,  must  seem  to 
us  to  depreciate  the  power  of  our  salvation  or  make 
it  appear  to  us  other  than  the  touch  of  God.  There 
will  come  to  you  hours  of  great  exaltation ;  you  will 
go  up  to  mountain-tops  of  vision.  The  Divine  Voice 
will  speak  to  you  out  of  the  sun  and  out  of  the 
cloud.  Those  will  come  in  their  time  as  it  is  best. 
But  let  no  experience  and  no  expectation  of  them 
make  you  careless  or  distrustful  when  out  of  com- 
monest things,  out  of  daily  tasks,  and  daily  difficulties, 
and  daily  joys,  and  the  simplest  needs  of  your  nature, 
and  the  most  domestic  familiarities  of  life,  God  speaks 
to  you  and  offers  you  His  Son.  Know  His  voice  so 
truly  that  you  cannot  mistake  it  from  whatever  un- 
expected quarter  it  may  speak.  Watch  for  the 
Divine  Light  so  anxiously  that  you  may  never  say 
that  it  is  not  divine  from  whatever  humblest  quarter 
it  may  shine. 


XVII. 

PRAYER. 

"  If  ye  abide  in  Me,  and  My  words  abide  in  you,  ye  shall  ask 
what  ye  will,  and  it  shall  be  done  unto  you."  —  John  xv.  7. 

In  one  shape  or  another  the  religious  question 
which  gives  thoughtful,  religious  people  the  most 
trouble  is  probably  the  question  of  Prayer.  "We 
cannot  doubt  that  it  has  always  been  so.  We  feel 
sure  that  in  every  condition  of  religion,  down  to  the 
lowest,  in  which  men  are  moved  to  supplicate  God 
at  all,  the  struggle  between  the  two  feelings,  be- 
tween the  instinct  that  God  must  hear  and  answer, 
and  the  doubt  whether  God  can  hear  and  answer,  has 
been  always  going  on.  It  is  not  a  struggle  of  our 
days  alone  ;  it  is  not  a  question  which  certain  pecul- 
iar tendencies  of  our  time  have  brought  out.  It  is 
as  old  as  David ;  nay,  as  old  as  Job,  as  old  as  all 
religion. 

Is  it  possible  for  the  great  First  Cause  to  lay  Him- 
self open  to  appeals  which  originate  in  human  wills, 
and  so  to  yield  to  causes  behind  Himself  in  governing 
his  action  ?  You  see  our  very  jealousness  for  God's 
honor  comes  and  lays  itself  across  the  path  by  which 
our  timid  souls  are  creeping  to  His  mercy-seat.  The 
very  greatness  which  tempts  us  to  trust  Him  seems  to 
forbid  us  to  ask  Him.  Is  prayer,  then,  all  a  delusion  ? 
Is  it  a  mere  arrangement  for  a  soul's  own  discipline, 


PRAYER.  297 

incapable  of  influence  upon  the  action  of  God  ?  Is 
there  a  possible  reality  about  it?  We  cannot  help 
feeling  that  in  trying  to  give  answers  to  these  ques- 
tions, Christians  too  often  bewilder  their  minds  withj 
hopeless  speculations,  instead  of  going  to  Christ  ancL 
seeing  just  what  He  has  said  about  this  hard  subject 
of  prayer.  Let  us  take  up  one  verse  of  His  this 
afternoon,  and  see  how  clearly  He  deals  with  the 
whole  difficulty,  how  exactly  He  tells  us  what  we 
want  to  know. 

Christians,  who  long  to  pray,  but  sometimes 
almost  fear  to ;  who  are  distressed  by  doubting  just 
how  far  prayer  may  go,  just  how  confidently  it  is 
to  expect  its  answer ;  around  whose  closets  natural 
law  and  the  majesty  of  the  Almighty  seem  to  gather 
with  an  oppressiveness  that  almost  stifles  the  half- 
formed  petitions,  —  let  us  come  to  Jesus  and  beg  as 
the  Disciples  did,  "  Lord,  teach  us  to  pray,"  and 
see  what  He  means  when  He  tells  us  in  reply,  "  If 
ye  abide  in  me,  and  my  words  abide  in  you,  ye  shall 
ask  what  ye  will,  and  it  shall  be  done." 

"If  ye  abide  in  me."  What  is  it  to  abide  in 
Christ?  That  is  the  first  question  in  settling  the 
qualities  of  him  who  can  hope  to  pray  successfully. 
The  phrase  becomes  familiar  to  us  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment ;  and  indeed  we  might  find  a  parallel  that  would 
explain  it  to  us  in  several  of  the  different  kinds  of 
relation  that  exist  between  human  beings.  For  in- 
stance, we  should  all  understand,  I  think,  what  was 
meant  if  it  were  said  of  a  young  and  dutiful  child 
that  he  abode  or  lived  in  his  parents.  The  child's 
earliest  years  are  so  completely  hidden  behinrl  the 


f98  PRAYEB. 

parents'  life  that  you  do  not  look  upon  him  altogether 
as  a  separate  individuality,  but  rather  as  almost  a 
part  of  the  same  organism,  one  expression  of  the 
parents'  nature  ;  so  that,  just  as  the  arm,  the  tongue, 
the  eye,  are  several  media  for  the  expression  of  the 
parents'  will,  in  the  same  way,  though  in  a  higher 
degree,  the  child  is  another  limb  of  the  parental  life 
and  utterance  of  the  parental  nature.  The  law 
owns  this,  and  reaches  the  child  only  through  the 
parent.  We  all  expect  children's  opinions  on  mat- 
ters of  religion,  of  politics,  of  taste,  to  be  echoes  of 
their  parents'.  The  father  acts  and  thinks  for  the 
child.  The  child  acts  and  thinks  in  the  father. 
Thus,  until  the  time  when  the  gradual  departure 
takes  place,  the  child's  home  is  not  merely  in  his 
father's  house,  but  in  his  father's  character,  —  he 
abides  in  him. 

Or  take  another  case :  the  army  and  the  common 
soldier  "  abide  in "  the  general.  The  army  does 
what  its  general  does.  As  an  army,  it  has  no 
thought  or  action  out  of  him.  It  moves  when  he 
moves,  stops  moving  when  he  stops  moving.  We 
say  the  general  has  gone  here  and  there,  and  we 
mean  the  army  has  gone.  It  lays  aside  all  faculty 
of  decision,  or  rather  contributes  it  all  to  him,  and 
he  with  the  combined  responsibility  of  the  great 
multitude  upon  him  goes  his  way,  carrying  their  life 
in  his.  There  is  perhaps  the  most  complete  and 
absolute  identification  of  two  lives  which  it  is  possi- 
ble to  conceive  of. 

Now,  we  can  get  probably  a  better  idea  from  these 
examples  than  we    could   from   any  careful   defini- 


PRAYER.  299 

tions  of  what  it  is  for  a  human  soul  to  "  abide  in 
Christ."  The  child  abides  in  the  father;  the 
soldier  abides  in  the  general.  For  the  soul  to  abide 
in  Christ,  then,  is  for  it  to  be  to  Him  what  the  child 
is  to  the  father,  what  the  soldier  is  to  his  captain. 
It  is  for  it  to  give  up  its  will  to  His  as  completely  as 
the  surrenders  of  will  are  made  in  the  family  and  in 
the  army.  Nay,  the  "  giving  up  of  will "  does  not 
entirely  express  it,  because  that  implies  something 
like  reluctance  and  resistance.  But  the  child  has  no 
will  except  the  father  ;  and  the  soldier's  will  is  so 
entirely  at  one  with  his  captain's  upon  the  great 
general  purpose  of  the  war,  which  is  victory,  that  he 
rejoices  to  accept  that  captain's  will  in  all  details  and 
make  it  his  own.  Christ  is  at  once  our  Father  and 
our  Captain.  Perfect  affection  and  perfect  loyalty 
combine  to  shape  our  attitude  towards  Him  ;  and  the 
result  of  the  two  is  that  complete  identification  of 
our  life  with  His  life  by  which  we  "  abide  in  Him." 

Jesus  Himself  uses  another  figure  for  the  same 
idea :  "  The  Branch  cannot  bear  fruit  of  itself  except 
it  abide  in  the  vine."  There  is  the  same  identifica- 
tion of  life,  the  same  complete  dependence,  and  the 
same  transferrence  of  responsibility. 

In  this  truth  of  the  Believer's  "  abiding  in  Christ  " 
there  are  two  notions  involved,  —  of  Permanence  and 
of  Repose.  It  is  not  a  mere  temporary  harmony  of  the 
human  nature  with  the  divine.  Not  a  mere  glancing 
of  the  Christ-life  upon  the  man-life  in  some  of  its 
higher  and  more  spiritual  promontories,  but  it  is  an 
assured,  final  entrance  of  the  human  into  the  divine. 
It  is   the   entire   abandonment   and   destruction   of 


300  PRAYER. 

man's  old  homes  to  take  up  with  and  settle  down  in 
new.  The  man  who  abides  in  Christ  stands  on  the 
heights  of  his  new  life,  and  strains  his  sight  forward 
into  eternity,  and  sees  but  one  will,  which  is  both 
his  and  Christ's,  which  is  his  reconciled  to  and  swal- 
lowed up  in  Christ's,  flowing  straight  on,  beyond 
his  sight,  towf.  ds  the  Endless  End.  Its  permanence 
comes  from  tae  fact  that  it  is  a  new  life,  an  entire 
change ;  the  soul's  deliberate  removal  from  the 
kingdom  of  earth  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven, 
before  his  e^itrance  upon  which  a  man  "  must  be 
born  again." 

With  this  permanence  comes  Repose,  Rest,  an  in- 
ternal harmony  with  a  man's  self,  answering  to  the 
external  harmony  with  Christ,  that  freedom  of  the 
spiritual  nature  for  its  best  activity,  which  Christ 
calls  "  His  Peace."  There  is  a  new  tranquillity  which 
is  not  stagnation,  but  assurance,  when  a  life  thus 
enters  into  Christ.  It  is  like  the  hushing  of  a  million 
babbling,  chattering  mountain  streams  as  they  ap- 
proach the  sea  and  fill  themselves  with  its  deep  pur- 
poses. It  is  like  the  steadying  of  a  lost  bird's 
quivering  wings  when  it  at  last  sees  the  nest  and 
quiets  itself  with  the  certainty  of  reaching  it,  and 
settles  smoothly  down  on  level  pinions  to  sweep 
unswervingly  towards  it.  It  is  like  these  to  see  the 
calm  of  a  restless  soul  that  discovers  Christ  and  rests 
its  tired  wings  upon  the  atmosphere  of  His  truth, 
and  so  abides  in  Him  as  it  goes  on  towards  Him. 

It  is  strange  how  such  a  truth,  deeplj^  realized, 
purifies  religion,  how  it  clears  out  of  the  way  with 
quiet,  unnoticed  evaporation,  removing  them,  not  as 


PRAYER.  301 

the  wind  removes  clouds,  but  as  the  sun  removes 
them,  —  all  the  morbid  and  perplexing  questions  that 
have  blinded  the  spiritual  sight.  To  the  soul  that 
does  not  "  abide  in  Christ "  Christianity  seems  either 
a  very  heartless  system  on  the  part  of  God  or  a 
very  selfish  system  on  the  part  of  man.  The  Gos- 
pel is  to  be  obeyed.  Why  ?  Is  it  that  Christ  may 
be  glorified?  That  is  very  heartless  in  God,  man 
says,  to  shape  this  hard  law  of  life  only  for  His  and 
His  Son's  glory.  Is  it  that  the  obeyer's  soul  may  be 
saved  ?  That  is  a  very  low  and  selfish  motive  for  the 
Christian,  —  just  to  get  out  of  the  region  of  unhap- 
piness,  just  to  get  into  the  realm  of  joy.  But 
"enter  into  Christ"  and  the  difficulty  is  gone.  We 
are  no  longer  servilely  and  blindly  doing  His  unknown 
commandments,  nor  mercenarily  seeking  our  own 
good.  The  two  natures  are  harmonized;  our  wills 
unite.  We  want  the  world  converted,  and  sin  cast 
out,  and  the  Kingdom  of  Holiness  set  up.  He  is 
glorified  when  our  souls  are  saved.  The  salvation 
of  our  souls  is  in  glorifying  Him.  All  is  changed 
when  we  are  made  the  confidants  and  sharers  as  well 
as  the  mere  agents  of  His  purposes.  This  is  the 
transfer,  the  advance  which  He  Himself  describes  a 
few  verses  later  in  the  chapter,  when  He  says,  "  Hence- 
forth I  call  you  not  servants  ;  for  the  servant  knoweth 
not  what  his  Lord  doeth:  but  I  have  called  you 
Friends ;  for  all  things  which  I  have  received  of  my 
Father  I  have  made  known  unto  you."  This  is  what 
is  meant  by  "  If  ye  abide  in  me." 

And  "If  my  words  abide  in  you."     This  is  the 
second    condition    of    the   successful    prayer.     The 


aWZ  PRAYER. 

keeping  for  continual  and  instinctive  reference  of  the 
definite,  explicit  teachings  and  commands  of  Christ. 
We  can  see,  I  think,  why  this  second  condition  must 
necessarily  be  added  to  the  first.  That  first  relation, 
—  the  abiding  of  the  soul  in  Christ, — if  it  were  perfect, 
would  be  enough.  An  entire  sympathy  between  you 
and  the  Lord  would  make  it  impossible  for  you  to  do 
anything  but  just  what  was  the  Lord's  will.  But 
that  first  relation,  that  sympathy  is  not  complete ; 
it  is  very  imperfect  and  unreliable  here.  Therefore 
God  cannot  trust  to  man's  oneness  with  Him  to  ensure 
man's  always  unerringly  discovering  His  will.  He 
must  make  some  positive  and  definite  announcement 
of  it.  He  must  give  him  not  merely  His  own  spirit, 
but  His  own  words.  The  soul's  abiding  in  Jesus 
will  make  him  ready  to  accept  Jesus'  words,  and  then 
the  words  will  come  to  lead  the  soul  into  a  deeper 
and  deeper  abiding-place  in  its  Saviour.  This  gives 
us  the  true  place  of  the  Bible,  its  true  relation  to 
the  more  immediate  communion  of  the  human  soul 
with  God's,  where  no  printed  book  or  spoken  word 
intrudes.  And  this  is  perfectly  carried  out  into  the 
two  illustrations  that  we  used.  The  father  trusts 
his  child  and  the  captain  trusts  his  soldier,  in  virtue 
of  the  identification  of  their  lives,  to  do  his  will  en- 
tirel}^ ;  but  it  is  by  reason  of  the  imperfect  sympathy 
wliich  hinders  the  inferior  from  perfectly  appre- 
hending the  superior's  will  that  the  father  and  the 
captain  must  have  codes  of  government  and  issue 
orders  of  the  day  for  their  subordinates. 

The  Bible  is  a  temporary  expedient ;  the  oneness 
of  the  soul  with  God  is   an   essential    and  eternal 


PRAYER.  303 

necessity.  The  one  we  may  outgrow,  the  other 
we  can  never  do  without.  In  Heaven  we  shall  need 
no  Bibles.  Who  will  be  patient  to  look  down  upon 
a  page  and  read  that  God  is  Love,  when  the  Eternal 
Love  is  burning  there  upon  the  throne,  and  our  full 
eyes  may  look  into  His  depths  unhindered  ?  Who 
will  want  to  read  the  faithfulness  of  Jesus  when  the 
"  Faithful  and  True,"  with  feet  of  brass  and  holding 
the  stars  in  His  unchanging  hands,  stands  there  before 
us  in  the  midst  of  the  candlesticks?  We  hold  our 
Bible  tightly,  full  of  the  precious  words  of  God;  but 
who  does  not  hold  them,  ready  to  let  them  go  when 
the  great  "  Word  "  Himself  shall  take  us  perfectly  into 
His  sympathy  to  abide  in  Him  forever  ? 

But  now,  for  the  present,  we  hold  them.  We 
must  not  merely  abide  in  Him,  but  have  His  words 
abide  in  us.  I  will  tell  you  how  this  last  clause 
seems  to  me.  There  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  faintly 
sketched  picture  of  a  solemn  council-room  in  the 
heart  of  the  true  Christian,  around  which  sit  in  beau- 
tiful and  holy  chairs  the  judges  of  our  lives,  —  the 
words  of  Jesus.  Every  act  that  the  true  Christian 
does  he  compels  to  pass  upon  its  way  from  concep- 
tion to  execution  through  that  council-room,  and 
every  word  of  Jesus  sitting  in  its  place  must  give  its 
sanction  to  every  act.  No  deed  must  go  forth  that 
cannot  carry  the  approval  of  every  utterance  of  Him 
to  whom  the  Christian  has  given  up  his  will.  We 
do  not  trust  even  our  personal  feelings  for  our  master 
as  a  final  test.  So  long  as  we  have  His  words,  telling 
us  what  we  must  do  and  what  we  must  not  do,  we 
fear  the  distortions  of  feeling  that  we  know  too  well, 


304  PRAYER. 

and  rejoice  in  that  judgment-room  within  us  where 
the  words  of  Christ  are  throned. 

You  see,  then,  what  is  added  when  we  are  told  that 
we  must  not  only  abide  in  Christ,  but  also  have  His 
words  abide  in  us.  We  are  to  keep  them  as  test- 
words  to  try  our  lives  by,  and  see  how  deeply  we 
abide  in  Him.  "  If  ye  love  me,  keep  my  command- 
ments." Is  not  that  Christ's  own  summary  of  the 
two  conditions  ?  He  in  whom  they  are  both  fulfilled 
is  the  full  and  symmetrical  Christian,  keeping  affec- 
tion always  true  by  obedience,  and  obedience  always 
fresh  and  glowing  with  sympathetic  love.  This  is  to 
abide  in  Christ,  and  to  have  His  words  abide  in  us. 

And  now  what  have  we  reached  ?  It  is  this  full 
and  symmetrical  Christian,  —  the  perfect  man  in 
Christ,  —  of  whom  Christ  says  that  he  "  shall  ask 
what  he  will  and  it  shall  be  done  unto  him."  Does 
it  seem  strange,  the  large,  unconditional  promise? 
The  simple  question  is,  "What  will  this  regenerated 
man,  this  child  in  perfect  sympathy  with  his  father, 
this  Christian  abiding  in  Christ,  —  what  will  he  ask 
of  God  ?  Evidently  he  will  ask,  he  can  ask,  nothing 
but  Christly  things  in  Christly  ways.  His  will  has 
become  an  echo  of  the  will  of  Christ.  What  can  he 
desire  that  Christ  does  not  desire  ?  Try  to  put  upon 
his  lips  a  prayer  that  God  would  not  grant,  —  a  prayer 
of  presumption,  or  uncharitableness,  or  self-indul- 
gence, and  it  drops  off.  It  will  not  stay  upon,  it 
will  not  go  up  to  heaven  from,  lips  like  those.  He 
cannot  pray  it  so  long  as  he  abides  in  Christ.  He 
must  go  outside  of  his  abiding-place  ;  he  must  sepa- 
rate his  will  from  his  Lord's,  before  his  mind  can 


PRAYER.  305 

shape  or  his  mouth  utter  an  unchristian  prayer. 
True,  the  most  earnest  Christian  may  err  about  the 
will  of  God.  He  may  pray  for  sunshine  when  it  is 
the  will  of  God  that  it  should  rain.  He  may  ask  for 
comfort  when  it  is  God's  will  that  he  should  suffer. 
But  this  can  only  come  in  superficial  things.  In  the 
one  central  thing  of  all  —  his  own  spiritual  life  —  he 
cannot  err.  He  knows  that  "  this  is  the  will  of  God, 
even  his  sanctification."  He  may  cry  out  for  that 
with  perfect  certainty ;  and  for  all  other  things,  if  he 
prays  as  every  Christian  ought,  submitting  his  prayer 
to  God's  revision,  "Nevertheless,  not  my  will  but 
Thine  be  done  ;  "  then,  whether  the  special  blessing 
that  he  asked  is  sent  or  not,  the  larger  petition  with 
which  he  covered  in  and  included  his  lesser  one  is 
surely  answered.  The  thing  he  really  "  willed "  is 
"  done  unto  him." 

Or  take  the  other  condition.  Can  he  in  whom  the 
words  of  Christ  abide  pray  an  unanswered  prayer  ? 
God  leaves  unanswered  among  earnest  prayers  only 
those  which  His  own  character  and  plans  make  it  im- 
possible for  Him  to  answer.  And  can  the  soul  that 
tests  every  petition  by  the  Bible  pray  any  such 
prayers  as  those  ?  Can  he  in  whom  this  word  of 
Christ  abides — "  Seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God 
and  His  righteousness" — go  on  clamoring  with 
miserable  mercenary  prayers  for  houses  and  lands, 
for  food  and  drink,  as  if  they  were  the  first  things  to 
seek  ?  Can  he  in  whom  this  word  of  Christ  abides  — 
"I  say  unto  you,  love  your  enemies"  —  torture  his 
lips  into  uncharitable  and  malignant  petitions,  be- 
seeching God  for  vengeance  on  his  foes  ?     Or  he  in 


306  PRAYER. 

whom  this  everlasting  word  of  Christ  abides,  —  "  In 
the  world  ye  shall  have  tribulations,"  —  can  you  con- 
ceive of  him  as  vexing  God  with  querulous  suppli- 
cations to  be  released  from  suffering,  and  not  de- 
lighting God  with  holy  petitions  that  he  may  be 
brave  and  patient  under  it,  that  he  may  be  purified 
and  made  perfect  by  it?  Oh,  my  dear  friends, 
how  many  of  our  prayers  must  go  unprayed,  if  we 
sent  them  up  to  the  mercy-seat  through  that  judg- 
ment-chamber where  the  words  of  Jesus  sit !  How 
many  times  we  have  complained  that  our  prayer 
brought  no  answer,  when  it  was  a  prayer  we  never 
could  have  prayed  unless  we  first  drove  out  every 
word  of  Christ  from  its  abiding-place  within  us  !  Is 
there  a  Christian  here  who  can  declare  before  God 
that  he  ever  prayed  to  God  in  perfect  submission 
to  Christ's  will,  in  perfect  conformity  to  Christ's 
words,  and  got  no  answer  ?  Not  here  ;  not  in  all  the 
world ;  not  in  all  the  ages  ! 

This  is  the  meaning  of  Christ's  promise:  The  true 
Christian  must  always  have  an  answer  to  his  prayer, 
because  he  can  never  pray  a  prayer  incapable  of 
answer.  Does  it  sound  like  a  mere  truism?  Is  it 
an  insisrnificant  conclusion  that  we  have  reached? 
Does  it  amount  to  nothing  to  say  that  Christ  will 
grant  all  good  men's  prayers  because  they  cannot 
ask  anything  that  He  is  not  willing  and  anxious  to 
grant  already  ?  Surely  there  is  no  weakening  of  the 
thought  of  prayer  in  this.  How  would  you  strengthen 
it  ?  Would  you  say  that  the  good  man  may  ask  of 
God  things  that  He  is  unwilling  to  bestow,  and  gain 
them  ?     But  why  is  God  unwilling  to  bestow  them 


PRAYER.  307 

except  for  one  of  two  causes :  either  that  the  giv- 
ing of  them  would  injure  the  soul  that  asks  them,  or 
that  it  would  interfere  with  some  plan  that  the 
divine  wisdom  has  shaped  for  the  universe  at  large  ? 
In  either  case  can  you  conceive  of  a  true  and  filial 
prayer  demanding  the  unwilling  boon  ?  Grant  that 
the  Christian  has  the  power,  will  he  use  it?  Must 
he  not  in  using  it  depart  out  of  that  harmony  with 
Chiist  which  is  the  very  condition  of  his  success, 
cease  to  abide  in  Him,  and  so  fail  of  the  dangerous 
gift  that  he  desires  ? 

You  see  it  all  when  you  look  at  a  child  asking  a 
father  for  some  benefit.  Prayer  is  no  fiction  between 
those  eager  lips  that  beg  and  those  other  gracious 
lips  that  cordially  bestow  the  boon.  There  is  no 
sham  in  that  petition.  The  whole  scene  is  purely, 
beautifully  real.  The  blessing  really  comes  in 
answer  to  the  prayer.  But  it  is  not  necessary  that 
the  idea  of  a  conquered  reluctance  should  come  in. 
The  father  wants  to  give  as  much  as  the  child  wants 
to  receive.  The  child,  if  he  be  truly  dutiful  and  in- 
telligent, will  desire  to  receive  nothing  that  the 
father  does  not  want  to  give.  It  will  be  only  as  he 
abides  in  his  father,  and  his  father's  words  abide  in 
him,  that  he  will  expect  that  he  can  ask  what  he 
will,  and  it  shall  be  given  unto  him. 

This  is  imperfect.  Take  the  perfect  scene  of 
prayer,  the  Son  of  God  praying  to  His  Father :  was 
there  a  conflict  of  wills  ?  Was  there  a  conquering  of 
reluctance?  Nay,  that  is  carefully  excluded.  Al- 
though the  Son  abides  perfectly  in  the  Father,  so 
that  He  and  His  Father  are  one,  and  therefore  He 


308  PRAYER. 

surely  may  ask  what  He  will,  "  and  it  shall  be  done," 
yet  the  very  chance  of  His  will  conflicting  with  the 
Father's  will  is  anticipated,  and  the  superiority  of  the 
Father's  will  provided  for.  "  Not  my  will  but  thine  be 
done."  In  the  desert,  on  the  mountain,  by  the  table, 
wherever  He  prayed,  there  was  the  picture  of  the  per- 
fect prayer.  Towards  the  condition  of  the  praying 
Christ  all  our  prayers  strive,  and  are  to  be  measured  by 
the  nearness  with  which  they  approach  that  union  of 
perfect  sympathy  with  God  and  perfect  submission  to 
God  with  which  He  laid  hold  of  the  divine  willing- 
ness to  help. 

The  result  of  our  whole  study  of  Prayer  to-day 
seems  to  be  this,  that  it  involves  far  more  than  we 
ordinarily  think,  —  a  certain  necessary  relation  be- 
tween the  soul  and  God.  The  condition  of  prayer  is 
personal ;  it  looks  to  character.  How  this  rebukes  our 
ordinary  slipshod  notions  of  what  it  is  to  pray !  God's 
mercy-seat  is  no  mere  stall  set  by  the  vulgar  roadside, 
where  every  careless  passer-by  may  put  an  easy  hand 
out  to  snatch  any  glittering  blessing  that  catches 
his  eye.  It  stands  in  the  holiest  of  holies.  We  can 
come  to  it  only  through  veils  and  by  altars  of  puri- 
fication.    To  enter  into  it,  we  must  enter  into  God. 

O  my  dear  friends,  there  is  not  one  of  us  that  can 
live  without  praying.  We  all  know  that.  But  pray- 
ing is  not  "  saying  our  prayers,"  not  shuffling  through 
a  few  petitions  morning  and  evening,  nor  clamoring 
with  imperious  voices  before  God's  presence,  setting 
up  our  own  will,  however  earnestly  and  vehemently, 
against  His.  "  Lord  teach  us  to  pray,"  we  ask  ;  and 
the  first  answer  is,   "  If  ye   abide  in  me  and  my 


PRAYER.  309 

words  abide  in  you,"  then  ye  shall  pray  successfully. 
We  must  be  Christians  first.  We  must  enter  into  the 
new  life,  and,  once  there,  Prayer  will  grow  wonder- 
fully easy  ;  as  easy  to  pray  on  earth,  "  Lord  Jesus, 
have  mercy  upon  me,"  as  it  will  be  to  praise  in 
heaven,  "  Thou  art  worthy,  O  Lord,  for  thou  hast 
redeemed  us." 


XVIII. 
THE    ETERNAL    HUMANITY. 

"  I  am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Beginning  and  the  End,  the  First 
and  the  Last."  —  Rev.  xxii.  13. 

With  all  the  other  deficiencies  in  our  ordinary 
Christianity,  every  earnest  Christian  thinker  is  con- 
tinually thrown  back  to  feel  that  its  fundamental 
defect  is  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  its  great  head 
and  centre,  Christ.  Christ  is  Christianity.  He  does 
not  merely  teach.  He  is  the  religion  which  we  hold. 
To  know  it,  we  must  know  Him.  He  is  not  merely 
the  revealer,  but  the  truth.  Hence  comes  the  high 
ambition  to  know  more  of  the  Saviour  in  order  that 
our  share  of  the  salvation  may  be  more  complete. 
Who  is  He  ?  What  is  there  in  Him  that  fits  Him  for 
His  work  ?  When  did  His  work  begin  ?  By  what 
continual  power  does  it  go  on  ?  The  New  Testament 
comes  in  answer  to  these  questions  to  tell  us  all  that 
we  may  know  of  Christ.  This  verse  from  the  Revela- 
tion of  St.  John  may  help  us  to  much  knowledge  of 
Him,  and  I  invite  you  as  Christians,  this  afternoon, 
to  a  short  study  of  the  truths  which  it  contains. 

For  the  verse  comprises  Christ's  declaration  of 
Himself.  He  asserts  His  own  eternity.  He  is  the  be- 
ginning of  all  things  and  the  end  of  all  things,  —  an 
eternity  of  the  past,  an  eternity  of  the  future.  His 
power  for  man  resides  in  these,  His  two  eternities. 


THE    ETERNAL    HUMANITY.  311 

each  of  which,  His  life   as   Alpha  and  His  life   as 
Omega,  has  its  peculiar  benefits  for  us. 

And  remember,  at  the  very  outset,  what  such  a 
declaration  must  include.  Christ  says,  "  I  am 
Eternal."  Now,  that  must  mean  not  merely  that  He 
has  existed  and  shall  exist  forever,  but  also  that  in 
the  forevers  of  the  past  and  the  future  He  is  eter- 
nally Christ ;  that  the  special  nature  in  which  He 
relates  Himself  to  us  as  Saviour  never  had  a  begin- 
ning and  shall  never  have  an  end.  Now,  what  is  that 
special  nature? — Christ!  The  word  includes  to  our 
thought  such  a  Divinity  as  involves  the  human  ele- 
ment. Christ  is  the  Divinely  human,  the  humanly 
Divine.  It  is  the  Deity  endowed  with  a  peculiar 
human  sympathy,  showing  by  a  genuine  brotherhood 
the  experience  of  man.  That  is  to  say,  there  are 
two  words:  God  and  Man.  One  describes  pure 
deity,  the  other  pure  humanity.  Christ  is  a  word 
not  identical  with  either,  but  including  both.  It  is 
the  Deity  in  which  the  Humanity  has  part ;  it  is  the 
Humanity  in  which  the  Deity  resides.  It  is  that 
special  mediatorial  nature  which  has  its  own  double 
wearing  of  both,  the  ability  to  stand  between  and 
reconcile  the  separated  manhood  and  divinity. 

Keep  this  in  mind,  and  then  see  what  it  will  mean 
when  we  are  told  that  this  Christ  nature,  this  divine 
human,  has  existed  forever.  Are  we  not  in  the  habit 
of  talking  as  if  the  redemption  which  called  for  an 
anointed  Redeemer  were  a  late  thought  in  the  uni- 
versal history?  Untold  ages  after  the  dateless  time 
when  God  began  to  be.  His  almighty  word  was 
spoken,  and  a  new  world  with  a  new  race  to  live  on 


312  THE   ETERNAL,   HUMANITY. 

it  shaped  itself  out  from  the  void.  In  that  new 
world  a  new  experiment  of  moral  life  brought  a 
catastrophe  unknown  before,  to  meet  whose  terrible 
demands  the  great  Creator  came  Himself  and  took  the 
nature  of  this  last  creature  living  in  His  last  creation. 
God  was  made  man,  and  Christ  the  God-man  was 
made  manifest  before  the  worlds.  Here  we  make 
man,  you  see,  a  late  thing  in  the  history  of  the 
universe ;  and  how  is  it  possible,  then,  that  Christ, 
who  is  God  with  the  element  of  human  sympathy, 
should  be  eternal?  And  just  here,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
there  comes  in  one  of  the  key-passages  of  the  Bible, 
which  we  are  always  far  too  apt  to  overlook.  It  is 
that  verse  in  Genesis :  "  In  the  image  of  God  created 
He  man."  God  made  man  like  Himself.  Ages  before 
the  incarnation  made  God  so  wonderfully  in  the 
image  of  man,  the  creation  had  made  man  in  the 
image  of  God. 

Now,  if  we  can  comprehend  that  truth  at  all,  it 
must  be  evident  that  before  man  was  made  the  man- 
type  existed  in  God.  In  some  part  of  His  perfect 
nature  there  was  the  image  of  what  the  new  creation 
was  to  be.  Already,  before  man  trod  the  garden  in 
the  high  glory  of  his  new  Godlikeness,  the  pattern  of 
the  thing  he  was  to  be  existed  in  the  nature  of  Him 
who  was  to  make  him.  Before  the  clay  was  fashioned 
and  the  breath  was  given,  this  humanity  existed  in 
the  Divinity;  already  there  was  a  union  of  the 
Divine  and  human  ;  and  thus  already  there  was  the 
eternal  Christ. 

Stop  here  one  minute,  and  see  how  this  exalts  the 
human  nature  that  we  wear.  In  the  midst  of  the  eter- 


THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  313 

nity  of  God,  there  bursts  forth  into  being  the  new  life 
of  man.  What  shall  we  say  of  it  ?  Is  it  just  a  creat- 
ure of  the  moment  which  witnesses  its  birth  ?  Is  it 
just  another  of  the  world's  ephemera,  with  a  little 
longer  span  of  life  than  some  of  its  tinier  brethren  ? 
Is  it  a  new  type  of  being  made  to  be  born  and  die  ? 
What  if  this  other  truth  be  true  ?  What  if  the  type 
of  this  life  I  live  were  part  and  parcel  of  the  ever- 
lasting Godhead  ?  What  if  it  be  the  peculiar  glory 
of  one  of  the  persons  of  that  Godhead  that  He  has 
worn  forever,  bound  with  His  perfect  deity,  the  per- 
fect archetype  and  pattern  of  this  humanity  of  mine  ? 
What  if  there  be  a  Christ  who  is  the  Alpha,  the 
beginning  of  all  things ;  who  only  brought  out  into 
exhibition  when  He  came  in  human  flesh  that  genu- 
ine human  brotherhood  which  had  been  in  him  for- 
ever? At  once  is  not  my  insignificance  redeemed? 
Every  power  in  me  grows  dignified  and  worthy, 
catching  some  of  the  importance  of  the  eternal  type 
it  represents.  My  love,  —  poor,  feeble,  grovelling 
thing,  that  licks  the  dust  and  twines  itself  round 
rubbish,  —  lo,  it  is  one  with,  it  is  capable  of  being 
like,  the  perfect  affection  with  which  from  all  eter- 
nity the  holy  Christ  has  loved  all  holy  things !  My 
indignation,  that  blazes  its  strength  away  in  all  sorts 
of  impotent  furies,  has  a  sublime  identity  with  the 
sacred  wrath  which  burns  in  Christ's  bosom  when 
He  looks  at  sin.  My  hope  is  the  dimmed  copy  of  His 
power  of  eternal  prophecy.  I  go  through  my  nature, 
and  I  trace  out  in  these  blurred  and  dimmed  lines 
the  copies  whose  originals  are  all  in  Him.  Here  is 
the  tragedy  of  human  life,  dear  friends      When  the 


314  THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY. 

swine  wallows  in  his  mire,  or  the  butterfly  trifles  his 
sunny  life  away,  it  is  a  base  or  little  nature  given  up 
to  base  or  little  ends.  When  you  or  I  live  the  lives 
of  brutes  or  butterflies  we  are  taking  that  man- 
nature  which  is  eternal,  whose  image  and  plan  was 
a  part  of  Godhead  through  all  the  infinite  forever  of 
the  past ;  we  are  taking  that  man-nature  which 
copies  on  earth  the  uncreated  life  of  Christ  in  Heaven, 
nay,  (shall  we  say  it  ?)  we  are  taking  Christ  and 
making  Him  contemptible  with  the  drunkenness  of 
low  debauchery,  or  setting  Him  in  the  idle  whirl  and 
meaningless  waste  of  fashionable  folly.  Oh,  Avith 
what  shame  and  reverence  we  should  carry  through 
the  world  this  human  nature  if  we  really  knew  that 
it  did  not  begin  to  be  with  Adam,  but  existed  for- 
ever in  the  eternal  Christ ! 

I  hold,  then,  that  the  Incarnation  was  God's  com- 
mentary on  that  verse  in  Genesis,  "  In  the  image 
of  God  created  He  man."  Yes,  "  from  the  begin- 
ning "  there  had  been  a  second  person  in  the  Trinity, 
—  a  Christ,  whose  nature  included  the  man-type.  In 
due  time  this  man-type  was  copied  and  incorporated 
in  the  special  exhibition  of  a  race.  There  it  degen- 
erated and  went  off  into  sin.  And  then  the  Christ, 
who  had  been  what  He  was  forever,  came  and  brought 
the  pattern  and  set  it  down  beside  the  degenerate 
copy,  and  wrought  men's  hearts  to  shame  and  peni- 
tence when  they  saw  the  everlasting  type  of  what 
they  had  been  meant  to  be,  walking  among  the  mis- 
erable shows  of  what  they  were. 

If  this  truth  be  so,  then  we  cannot  but  feel  that 
there  is  much  in  it  to  enable  us  to  feel  rightly  with 


THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  315 

regard  to  every  one  of  the  new  theories  which 
look  to  a  confusion  and  a  loss  of  the  distinctive  type 
of  manhood.  We  have  all  had  our  interest  excited 
by  the  apparent  tendencies  of  modern  science 
towards  a  depreciation  of  what  has  always  been 
considered  the  unshared  honor  of  humanity.  Wise 
men  come  forward  and  tell  us  of  a  course  of  structural 
development,  wherein  man  becomes  not  a  new  cre- 
ation, for  whom  a  new  word  was  spoken  from  the 
creative  lips,  a  new  gesture  made  by  the  creative 
hand,  but  merely  the  present  completion  of  the 
natural  progress  of  lower  natures  working  up  thus 
far  by  some  process  of  selection  whose  law  is  resident 
within  itself.  The  gorilla  in  his  generations  is  seen 
climbing  through  the  gradations  of  a  more  and  more 
perfect  apehood,  to  attain  the  summit  of  his  life  in 
man.  "  Man  is  in  structure  one  with  the  brutes." 
"All  are  but  coordinated  terms  of  nature's  great  pro- 
gression from  the  formless  to  the  formed  ;  from  the 
inorganic  to  the  organic ;  from  blind  force  to  con- 
scious intellect  and  will."  These  are  the  theories 
that  men  are  talking  of.  However  they  differ  in  de- 
tails, the  one  first  effect  of  all  of  them  must  be,  the 
depreciation  of  the  individuality  of  man,  the  loss  of 
his  special  type  of  being,  and  inevitably  the  confu- 
sion of  his  human  responsibility  in  the  intricate 
series  of  the  apes.  What  am  I  ?  Anything  but  one 
link  in  an  endless  chain,  that  over  self-moved  wheels 
runs  on  forever,  working  out  a  progress  so  mechani- 
cal that  in  it  morality  is  lost?  What  am  I?  Only  a 
higher  attainment  of  these  poor,  dumb  brutes,  digging 
the  earth  a  little  deeper  for  the  roots  I  am  to  eat,  piling 


316  THE  ETERNAL  HUMANITY. 

a  little  more  delicately  the  den  I  am  to  lire  in,  cry- 
ing a  little  more  articulately  the  pain  or  pleasure 
that  I  feel  ?  And  then  suppose  I  go  to  Revelation  to 
see  what  it  can  say  about  these  things.  Suppose  I 
find  there  this  sublime  truth,  that  the  man-type  for 
which  I  am  so  anxious  has  had  an  eternal  existence 
as  a  part  and  parcel  of  the  Deity ;  that,  however  this 
manifestation  of  it  has  been  reached,  there  is  mani- 
fest in  every  man  the  image  of  a  pattern-life  that  is 
in  God.  Let  me  carry  away  from  Revelation  the  su- 
preme truth  of  the  eternal  humanity  of  Christ,  and 
then  my  moral  life,  my  reverence  for  the  nature 
which  I  share,  my  high  ambition  after  its  perfection, 
all  this  is  unimpaired.  Let  science  show  me  my  af- 
finities with  the  lower  life  :  a  mightier  hand  points 
me  to  my  connections  with  the  higher.  I  go  back 
beyond  the  first  rudiment  that  curious  hands  have 
found  buried  in  the  slime  of  formless  worlds ;  I  go 
back  beyond  the  forming  of  the  world  in  which  man 
was  to  live,  back  to  the  beginningless  Alpha  of  all 
being,  and  lo,  in  Him  I  find  the  eternal  pattern  after 
which  my  nature  was  to  be  fashioned,  the  eternal 
perfection  which  my  nature  was  to  seek. 

But  the  highest  importance  of  this  truth  of  Christ's 
past  eternity  must  always  be  to  the  great  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement.  You  know  what  that 
doctrine  is.  It  tells  us  that  when  man  fell  from 
holiness  to  sin,  there  appeared  in  the  whole  universe 
only  one  nature  which  had  in  itself  a  fitness  to  un- 
dertake the  work  of  reconciliation  and  restoral. 
Only  one  nature  stood  forth  saying,  "  Lo,  I  come  !  " 
Christ  the  incarnate   God   assumed  the   work  and 


THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  317 

manifested  the  one  necessary  fitness  in  His  union  of 
the  divine  and  human  natures.  Then  comes  the 
question,  When  did  that  fitness  of  the  Christ  be- 
gin ?  Was  it  a  nature  given  Him  wlien  He  was  born 
of  Mary  ?  Was  it  a  new  assumption  of  an  element  of 
life  which  had  before  been  wholly  unfamiliar  ?  If  so, 
the  atonement  becomes  —  what?  A  late  expedient 
for  patching  up  the  breach  in  God's  experiment; 
a  special  provision  for  an  unforeseen  catastrophe. 
The  precious  element  of  Christ's  humanity  becomes 
only  the  tardy  and  pitiful  consequence  of  human 
sin.  But  take  the  deeper  view.  What  if  this  fit- 
ness of  nature  were  an  everlasting  thing  in  Christ, 
only  coming  to  special  utterance  when  He  was  born 
Jesus  the  child  of  the  Hebrew  Virgin  ?  What  if  He 
had  borne  forever  the  human  element  in  His  Divinity, 
anointed  Christ  from  all  eternity?  What  if  there 
had  been  forever  a  Saviourhood  in  the  Deity,  an 
everlasting  readiness  which  made  it  always  certain 
that,  if  such  a  catastrophe  as  Eden  ever  came,  such 
a  remedy  as  Calvary  must  follow  ?  Does  not  this 
deepen  all  our  thoughts  of  our  salvation  ?  Does  it 
not  teach  us  what  is  meant  by  "  the  Lamb  slain  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world  "  ? 

And  see  how  such  a  truth  tallies  with  all  God's 
ways.  This  natural  body  of  ours  has  in  itself  the 
fitness  for  two  sets  of  processes,  —  the  processes  of 
growth  and  the  processes  of  repair.  You  keep  your 
arm  unbroken,  and  nature  feeds  it  with  continual 
health,  makes  it  grow  hearty,  vigorous,  and  strong, 
rounds  it  out  from  the  baby's  feebleness  into  the  full, 
robust  arm  of  manhood.     You  break  that  same  arm, 


318  THE  ETERNAL  HUMANITY. 

and  the  same  nature  sets  her  new  efficiencies  at  work, 
she  gathers  up  and  reshapes  the  vexed  and  lacerated 
flesh,  she  bridges  over  the  chasm  in  the  broken 
bone,  she  restores  the  lost  powers  of  motion  and 
sensation,  and  beautifully  testifies  her  completeness, 
which  includes  tlie  power  of  the  Healer  as  well  as 
the  Supplier.  So  it  is  to  me  a  noble  thought,  that 
in  an  everlasting  Christhood  in  the  Deity  we  have 
from  all  eternity  a  provision  for  the  exigency  which 
came  at  last,  —  a  provision,  not  temporary  and  spas- 
modic, but  existing  forever,  and  only  called  out  into 
operation  by  the  occurrence  of  the  need. 

It  seems  to  me  that  all  this  must  increase  the  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  thought  of  the  Atonement,  both  for 
its  rejecters  and  its  accepters,  and  must  increase  its 
deep  solemnity  for  all  who  preach  it.  A  man  puts 
aside  the  offer  of  Salvation  by  Christ  Jesus.  What 
is  it  he  rejects?  Is  it  a  sudden  thought,  a  new  ex- 
pedient of  God?  Is  it  a  hurried  plan  which  God  has 
made  ready  on  the  moment  to  repair  this  failure  in 
His  fallen  world  ?  If  this  were  all,  it  would  be  bad 
enough.  But  when  I  see  a  man  deliberately  raise 
his  hand  and  ward  off  from  his  life  the  operation  of 
one  part  of  the  divine  nature  which  has  been  aiming 
at  the  result  of  his  salvation  from  eternity,  how 
shall  I  utter  the  fearfulness  of  his  sin  and  of  his  peril  ? 
I  look  back  to  the  untold  times  before  the  world 
was  made.  Then,  then,  before  man  was,  lo,  Christ 
already  is,  with  the  provisions  of  salvation  in  His 
nature  !  Among  all  other  lives  His  life  is  unique,  for 
it  alone  contains  the  fitness  to  save  —  if  it  should  ever 
need  it  ■ —  the  yet  unborn  world.     I  see  man  spring  to 


THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  319 

life.  I  see  him  siu.  I  sec,  born  of  his  sinning  stock 
and  sinning  like  your  fathers,  in  these  kite  genera- 
tions, you,  man  in  your  capacity,  man  in  your 
reality  of  sin.  And  then  comes  forward  tliis  Eternal 
Saviour.  I  see  Him  lay  His  long-kept  mercy  on  your 
soul,  born  in  these  hitter  days  to  need  it.  At  last 
the  mercy  that  has  waited  all  through  eternity  lias 
found  its  purpose.  It  comes  to  save  you.  And  if 
you  will  not  be  saved,  if  you  turn  your  poor  soul 
away,  what  can  I  say  but  that  you  are  insulting  God  ? 
What  can  I  do  but  tremble  for  you  ?  O  my  dear 
brother,  how  shall  you  escape  if  you  neglect  so  great 
salvation  ? 

And  when  an  earnest  soul  accepts  this  everlasting 
Christ,  is  there  not  a  new  glory  in  his  salvation  when 
he  thinks  that  it  has  been  from  everlasting.  He 
looks  back,  and  lo,  the  Saviour  was  his  Saviour  before 
the  worlds  were  made !  The  covenant  to  which  he 
clings  had  its  sublime  conditions  written  in  the  very 
constitution  of  the  Godhead.  It  was  not  spoken 
first  on  Calvary  ;  nay,  it  did  not  begin  when  it  was 
told  to  David,  or  to  Moses,  or  to  poor  Adam  crushed 
into  the  dust  with  his  new  sinfulness  outside  the 
garden-gate.  Before  them  all,  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  Deity,  was  written  the  prophecy  that  if  ever  in 
the  unfolding  of  the  ages  one  poor  human  soul  like 
mine  should  need  salvation,  the  eternal  Christ,  bring- 
ing His  credential  of  Eternal  Human  Brotherhood, 
should  come  to  save  it.  The  ages  rolled  along ;  my 
soul  was  born,  and  sinned  ;  it  cried  out  to  be  saved, 
and  lo,  Christ  came  !  What  is  there  left  for  me  to  do 
but  cling  to  Him  with  a  love  strong  as  His  precious 


820  THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY. 

promises  and  a  faith  firm  as  His  Everlasting  Saviour- 
ship? 

Let  these  be  the  lessons  which  we  gather  up  as  we 
think  upon  the  Christ  of  the  eternal  past.  He  is 
the  Alpha  of  our  faith.  See  what  it  means.  It  is 
the  Truth  of  an  eternal  manhood  in  the  Godhead. 
It  teaches  us  the  glory  of  this  human  life  we  wear 
as  being  a  thing  whose  type  and  pattern  was  eternal, 
and  it  teaches  us  the  magnitude  of  the  grace  which 
saves  us  as  being  the  necessary  effort  of  one  part  of 
the  uncreated  Deity.  He  who  has  learned  all  the 
great  lesson  of  this  Christ  the  Alpha  must  be  filled 
with  a  sublime  reverence  for  his  own  humanity, 
must  reverence  it  and  keep  it  pure  and  sacred  as  a 
holy  thing;  and  he  must  lay  hold  with  a  sublime 
confidence  on  that  redemption  which  he  sees  stretch- 
ing back  and  anchoring  itself  in  the  uncaused  pur- 
poses and  qualities  of  God. 

And  now,  if  the  term  "Alpha"  asserts  a  past  eternity 
for  Christ,  it  remains  for  us  to  go  on  and  see  how 
the  other  term  "  Omega"  declares  for  Him  an  eternity 
in  the  future.  He  is  not  merely  the  beginning,  but  the 
end ;  not  only  the  first,  but  the  last ;  not  merely 
there  has  always  been,  but  there  shall  always  be,  a 
Divine  Human  in  the  Godhead.  This,  too,  is  a  truth 
which  we  are  liable  to  forget.  As  we  think  the  mar- 
vellous nature  of  the  Saviour  began  in  the  manger, 
so  we  sometimes  feel  as  if  its  elements  were  sundered 
in  the  last  agony  of  the  cross.  Practically  a  great 
many  of  us  believe  in  a  Trinity  only  for  thirty-three 
years  of  history.  Is  not  this  the  value  of  those 
passages  in  the  New  Testament  which  show  us  the 


THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  321 

ascended  Saviour  speaking  or  acting  still  in  the  same 
genuine  humanity  which  He  had  worn  on  earth? 
While  Stephen  stands  waiting  for  the  crash  of  mur- 
derous stones,  "  he  looks  up  steadfastly  into  heaven 
and  sees  Jesus  the  Son  of  Man  standing  on  the  right 
hand  of  God."  Saul,  prostrate  on  the  Damascus  road, 
cries  out  to  the  rebuking  voice,  "  Who  art  thou, 
Lord?"'  and  the  answer  is,  "I  am  Jesus."  And  as  the 
last  Revelation  closes  and  the  curtains  are  gathered 
together,  to  be  opened  again  only  for  the  final 
coming  of  llie  Judge,  the  last  voice  that  comes  forth 
is  the  voice  of  Christ,  still  wearing  His  human  name 
and  lineage,  "  I  Jesus  have  sent  my  angel.  I  am  the 
root  and  offspring-  of  David."  What  is  all  this  for, 
but  to  assure  us  of  the  everlasting  manhood  in  our 
Lord  ?  The  human  hand  still  weighs  ;  the  human 
voice  still  speaks;  the  human  heart  still  loves. 
He  is  not  only  Alpha,  but  Omega.  As  all  our  hope 
shines  from  the  truth  that  there  ever  has  been,  so  it 
all  centres  in  the  truth  that  there  forever  shall  be,  a 
divine  and  human  Christ. 

The  highest  use  of  this  truth  of  Christ,  the  Omega, 
must  be  the  light  which  it  sheds  upon  the  realities  of 
the  judgment  day.  Christ  Himself  said,  "  The  Father 
judgeth  no  man,  but  hath  committed  all  judgment 
unto  the  Son."  Why  is  this  ?  Is  it  just  because  He 
has  worn,  is  it  not  rather  because  He  shall  forever 
wear,  the  human  nature  which  shall  make  Him  fit  to 
judge,  with  the  intelligence  and  sympathy  of  brother- 
hood, the  lives  of  men?  I  think  that  none  of  us  have 
any  idea  how  much  we  shelter  ourselves  away  from 
the  terrors  of  the  judgment  day  behind  the  unfamil- 


'622  THE  ETERNAL   HUiMANITY. 

iarity  of  God.  He  is  so  far  off,  so  different  from  us. 
We  cannot  really  think  that  He  is  going  to  take 
these  acts  and  motives  of  ours,  so  different  from  His, 
and  test  them  accurately,  judging  us  all  according 
to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body.  How  can  He,  —  He 
is  so  different  from  us,  so  far  away?  We  do  not 
put  it  to  ourselves  thus ;  we  do  not  put  it  to  our- 
selves at  all ;  but  at  tlie  bottom  this  is  the  way  that 
half  of  us  escape  the  pressure  of  responsibility.  But 
take  this  truth :  What  if  it  be  a  true  man  that  is  to 
judge  you,  not  merely  with  the  far-off  memory, 
but  with  the  present  consciousness  of  manhood? 
What  if  the  conviction  that  awaits  us  there  is  no 
other  but  just  that  with  which  brother-man  condemns 
our  sin  ?  As  a  pure  human  look  makes  our  impurity 
blush  its  own  sentence  to  the  guilty  face  ;  as  a  true 
eye  loosens  the  soj)histries  of  falsehood  and  makes  it 
own  its  lie ;  as  our  humanity  quails  before  a  brother- 
humanity  that  knows  its  impulses  and  temptations 
through  and  through,  —  so  shall  we  quail  before  the 
Christ.  He  is  to  be  our  judge,  passing  by  His  man- 
hood into  a  knowledge  of  the  sin  which  in  His  God- 
hood  He  will  punish. 

And  if  human  sin  needs  a  humanity  to  judge  it, 
do  not  these  weak  and  struggling  efforts  of  our  life 
after  goodness  crave  some  sympathy  to  which  they 
can  appeal  as  they  go  up  to  judgment  ?  What !  shall 
I  send  these  poor  pretences  of  holiness  up  to  heaven, 
this  ineffective  virtue  which  is  not  a  being  good,  but 
only  a  trying  to  try  to  be  so, — shall  I  send  them 
up  to  lay  themselves  against  the  fiery  purity  of  God 
and  be  burnt  off  like  spots  of  blemish  from  the  white 


THE   ETERNAL    HUMANITY.  323 

light  of  His  perf ectness  ?  Oh,  no,  give  me  a  man  ! 
Though  He  be  perfect,  He  will  know  what  human  im- 
perfection is.  Though  holiness  be  divine  without  a 
struggle  in  Him,  at  least  He  will  comprehend  what 
my  poor  struggles  mean,  and  take  them  as  the  feeble 
efforts  of  a  soul  that  is  trying,  not  to  purchase  heaven, 
but  just  to  praise  Him  who  has  already  bought  it.  If 
we  look  deep  enough  we  ought  to  feel  every  time  we 
see  a  little  child  at  night  trustfully  laying  his  day's 
life,  made  up  of  faint  desires,  feeble  efforts,  and  con- 
tinual failures,  into  the  hands  of  God,  what  a  blessed 
thing  it  is  that  there  is  in  that  God  an  everlasting 
Christ,  an  undying  humanity,  which  will  take  that 
day's  life  into  a  brother's  hands  and  count  it  precious 
with  all  the  intelligence  of  sympathy. 

And  is  there  not  great  beauty  in  this  truth  of 
Christ,  the  Omega,  as  we  relate  it  to  the  dead  ?  We 
have  all  lost  dear  friends  out  of  this  world.  We 
have  all  stood  upon  the  margin  which  was  the  far- 
thest, which  feet  untransfigured  by  death  might  reach, 
and  sent  some  beloved  soul  into  the  unknown  world. 
Where  have  we  sent  it?  To  God,  we  say,  bowing 
our  heads  with  resignation.  But  is  there  no  bleak- 
ness, no  f orlornness  in  our  answer  ?  God  is  so  far  off. 
However  loving,  kind,  or  wise,  He  is  all  God ;  the 
child  we  sent  Him  was  all  man  in  his  fresh,  genuine 
humanity.  But  what  if  there  be  a  humanity  in  God 
to  which  they  go  ?  What  if,  since  it  went  out  from  us, 
that  human  nature,  made  first  in  the  image  of  Christ 
the  human,  has  touched  again  that  perfect  nature 
out  of  which  it  sprang  and  finds  itself  at  home? 
Yes,  let  me  set  this  Christ  eternally  in  the  midst  of 


324  THE   ETERNAL   HUMANITY. 

the  otlier  world,  and  then  the  human  soul  that  goes 
there  goes  to  its  own.  It  meets  no  strangeness  on 
the  other  shore.  The  human  affections  just  loosened 
on  the  one  side  fasten  into  a  completer  unity  and  as' 
surance  on  the  other.  The  child  is  gathered  into 
the  arms  of  a  fatherhood  and  knows  no  strangeness 
or  surprise.  The  brother  clasps  hands  with  a  newer 
and  more  trusty  brotherhood.  We  can  commit  them 
to  a  God  who  knows  them  and  is  waiting  for  them. 
They  go  to  Jesus  and  rest  in  Him,  and  wait  for  us  till 
our  humanity,  made  perfect  too  by  death,  shall  find 
its  place  beside  them. 

This,  then,  we  mean  by  Christ  the  Omega,  a 
Christ  of  the  everlasting  future.  Alpha  and  Omega 
together.  His  life  bridges  all  eternity,  and  bearing 
our  hope  backward  fixes  it  firmly  in  a  security  which 
has  no  beginning ;  bearing  it  forward  crowns  it  with 
promises  that  have  no  end. 

There  is  another  view  of  this  whole  subject,  which 
we  must  not  enlarge  upon,  but  which  we  must  not  en- 
tirely omit.  We  have  spoken  of  the  eternal  life  of 
Christ  as  rounding  and  embracing  the  great  life  of 
the  world.  Is  it  not  true  likewise  of  every  single 
Christian  experience  that  Christ  is  its  Alpha  and 
Omega,  its  beginning  and  its  end  ?  A  soul  enters  on 
the  higher  life,  passes  by  the  doorway  of  conversion 
from  disobedience  to  obedience.  When  does  that 
soul  find  Christ  ?  Is  it  after  it  has  passed,  by  some 
power  of  its  own,  over  the  threshold,  that  there,  on 
the  inside,  it  finds  the  Lord  waiting  to  be  its  leader? 
Oh,  no !  it  looks  back  and  cannot  tell  the  moment 
when  it  was  not  led  by  Him,     It  finds  no  earliest  act 


THE  ETERNAL   HUMANITY.  326 

of  its  which  did  not  spring  out  of  some  yet  earlier 
act  of  His.  It  came,  but  He  called.  It  answered, 
but  first  He  spoke.  It  said,  "  T  will ; "  but  before  that 
He  said,  "  Wilt  thou  ?  "  Yes,  we  begin,  but  Christ 
always  began  before  us.  As  before  all  humanity  the 
primal  human  was  in  Him  forever,  so  before  all 
Christianity  the  source  and  root  of  all  is  Christ, 
out  of  whom  all  Christianity  must  flow.  He  is  the 
Alpha  of  our  religious  life,  antedating  every  act  of 
man's  obedience  by  the  eternal  promptings  of  His 
spirit  ajid  the  eternal  freeness  of  His  grace. 

And,  then.  He  is  its  Omega  too.  As  all  Christian 
influence  has  its  spring  in  Christ,  so  no  Christian 
duty  has  any  result  except  in  Him.  We  look  for- 
ward, dear  friends,  into  the  perfectness  that  is 
promised  us,  and  what  is  it  ?  Simply  that  we  should 
attain  to  Him.  We  may  go  far  in  the  eternal  de- 
velopments of  holiness,  but  we  can  never  outgo 
Him.  He  will  be  present  at  the  end  of  every  period 
of  everlasting  progress,  to  round  and  close  it  for  us 
and  to  introduce  us  to  a  new  one  as  He  introduced 
us  to  the  first,  for  He  is  exhaustless. 

Oh  that  we  could  learn  this  truth  of  an  exhaust- 
less  Christ.  We  build  our  Christian  lives  out  from 
themselves  as  if  Christ  were  the  starting-point  from 
which  the  first  joint  grew;  but  every  new  joint  must 
hang  itself  upon  its  predecessor  in  the  lengthening 
chain.  Oh  that  we  could  learn  that  the  life  of 
Christ,  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  beginning  and 
the  end,  stretches  from  beginning  to  end  under 
this  life  of  ours,  and  that  each  of  our  weak  acts, 
instead  of  fastening  itself  on  the  consistency  of  the 


32G  THE  ETERNAT.   HTTMANTTY. 

weak  acts  that  have  gone  before  it,  ought  to  pierce 
down  and  root  itself  directly  and  freshly  in  Him. 
May  I  plead  with  you  for  this  !  Strive  for  continual 
freshness  in  the  higher  life.  Let  it  not  build  itself 
upon  itself  as  mere  habit.  Let  it  grow  ever  out  of 
Him  as  a  true  life.  Let  each  act  distinctly  find 
its  motive,  find  its  strength  in  Him.  Keep  striking 
roots  into  His  personal  helpfulness  all  the  way  along. 
Make  Him  your  Alpha  and  Omega  ;  from  Alpha  to 
Omega  make  Him  the  source  of  every  strength  and 
truth  your  nature  seeks. 

"Of  Him,  and  through  Him,  and  to  Him  are  all 
things,  to  whom  be  glory  forever."  That  is  Paul's 
summary  of  our  truth.  "  Of  Him,"  the  Alpha  — 
"To  Him,"  the  Omega  — "  Through  Him,"  from 
Alpha  to  Omega,  the  Everlasting  Christ.  The  fault 
of  our  religion  is  that  we  do  not  know  enough  of 
Christ.  May  God  grant  that  if  we  have  at  all  learned 
how  He  begins  the  Christian  life  in  man  we  may  go 
on  learning  new  lessons  of  His  wondrous  power 
every  day,  till  some  day,  in  the  perfect  world,  we 
learn  the  perfect  lesson  of  how  He  can  glorify  a  poor, 
weak,  human  creature  with  Himself,  and,  gathering 
all  its  culture  into  Him,  take  our  souls  for  His  and 
be  our  Omega,  our  End  as  He  has  been  our  Begin- 
ning, the  last  complete  fulfilment  of  the  last  prayer 
that  we  shall  ever  pray,  when  prayer  ceases  because 
need  has  ceased  forever  I 


XIX. 

THE   CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY. 

*'  And  the  Evening  and  the  Morning  were  the  First  Day." 

Genesis  i.  5. 

There  are  many  mysteries  about  the  days  of 
Genesis  concerning  which  we  need  not  trouble  our- 
selves to-night.  But  this  one  verse  may  guide  our 
thoughts  in  the  direction  in  which  we  have  come  ex- 
pecting that  the}^  should  be  led.  It  is  a  noble  be- 
ginning of  the  world's  history.  It  declares  of  the 
first  day  that  it  was  made  up  of  an  evening  and  a 
morning.  It  is  not  so  that  we  ordinarily  reckon  the 
world's  days.  We  think  of  them  as  moving  on  from 
morning  to  evening,  opening  in  freshness,  and  exu- 
berance, and  hope,  ripening  through  hours  of  activity 
and  strength,  and  at  last  closing  in  peaceful  exhaus- 
tion, like  a  fire  that  has  burned  itself  out  to  ashes. 
Not  such  is  the  first  day  of  all  the  days.  It  begins 
with  evening,  with  the  fulfilment  and  completeness 
of  the  dayless  period  which  had  gone  before,  and 
moves  forward  into  the  morning,  into  the  exuber- 
ance, and  hope,  and  freshness  of  untried  ambitions 
and  attempts.  "  Evening  and  Morning  were  the  first 
day."  As  time  went  on,  within  each  of  those  unities 
which  we  call  days  was  summed  up  and  pictured  this 
truth,  that  every  fulfilment  has  at  its  heart  the  power 
of  a  new  beginning,  that  nothing  is  ever  finally  done, 


328  THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

that  all  is  ever  doing,  that  all  the  gathering  of  the 
results  of  one  period's  experience  has  for  its  purpose 
aud  natural  issue  the  opening  of  a  new  period  in 
which  that  experience  shall  become  effective  with 
new  form  and  face. 

It  is  a  depressing  doctrine  in  some  moods,  that 
nothing  is  ever  done,  that  all  is  ever  doing,  that 
nothing  finishes  except  that  it  may  instantly  begin 
again.  It  is  a  noble  and  inspiring  doctrine  when  we 
are  at  our  best,  for  the  absolutely  done  would  be 
the  absolutely  dead,  only  the  thing  to  be,  stirring  at 
its  heart,  proves  that  the  thing  which  has  been  is  still 
alive.  The  evening  gathers  with  its  dusky  peace  ; 
work  ceases ;  men  sit  by  quiet  firesides  ;  they  count 
the  gains  and  losses  of  the  completed  hours  under  the 
quiet  stars ;  the  glare  and  rush  grow  dim  and  still. 
It  would  be  dreadful  if  it  only  meant  a  finished  day. 
It  is  glorious  and  beautiful  because  it  means  a  day 
all  ready  to  open  ;  nay,  already  opening  in  this  calm 
completion.  It  is  St.  Paul's  great  teaching  that 
"  Experience  worketh  Hope." 

Is  not  this  first  day,  then,  the  type  of  what  all  days 
of  human  life  should  be  ?  Does  it  not,  set  there  in  the 
forefront  of  history,  bear  perpetual  testimony  to  the 
truth  that  no  completion  is  complete  or  can  be  truly 
understood,  unless  it  stands  in  close  connection  with 
a  new  commencement?  Does  it  not  give  us  the  sug- 
gestion which  we  want  when  we  are  gathered  here 
to-night  to  commemorate  the  honored  completion  of  a 
long  period  of  faithful  work  ?  You  close  your  youth 
and  pass  on  into  middle  life.  You  close  by  and  by 
your  middle  active  life  and  pass  on  into  old  age. 


THE  CHRISTIAN   ^UNISTRY.  329 

You  leave  one  place  where  you  have  lived  aud  move 
into  another.  You  are  no  longer  able  to  hold  one 
form  of  faith  but  a  more  generous  faith  opens  to  wel- 
come you.  One  sort  of  company  in  which  you  have 
been  much  at  home  dismisses  you,  and  your  life  hence- 
forth is  to  be  lived  among  new  faces.  You  finish  a 
piece  of  work  which  has  long  occupied  you  and  take  up 
new  tools  to  work  on  new  materials.  At  last  you 
go  from  life  to  life,  and  with  one  "  longing,  lingering 
look  behind  "  resign  this  "  pleasing  anxious  being." 
In  every  case  it  means  a  vast  difference  whether  you 
join  together  in  your  thought  only  the  old  beginning 
and  this  fulfilment,  or  this  fulfilment  and  the  new 
beginning  which  it  makes  possible,  upon  whether  the 
morning  and  the  evening  or  the  evening  and  the  morn- 
ing are  your  day,  upon  whether  the  forty  years  of 
journey  as  they  close  are  filled  more  with  recollection 
of  the  Egypt  out  of  which  he  came  or  the  Canaan  into 
which  they  have  brought  the  traveller. 

If  we  get  at  the  real  heart  of  the  difference  it  lies 
in  this,  that  he  who  has  lived  in  the  form  of  an  expe- 
rience looks  back,  while  he  who  has  entered  into  the 
substance  and  soul  of  an  experience  looks  forward. 
"  The  outward  man  perishes,"  as  Paul  says,  "  but  the 
inward  man  is  renewed  da}''  by  day."  The  perishing 
of  a  form  and  method  in  which  we  have  lived  may 
naturally  bring  a  pensive  sadness  like  that  which 
always  comes  to  us  as  we  watch  a  setting  of  the  sun, 
but  he  who  is  in  the  true  spirit  of  the  sunset  turns 
instantly  from  the  westward  to  the  eastern  look. 
The  things  the  day  has  given  him,  —  its  knowledge, 
and  its  inspirations,  and  its  friendship,  and  its  faith, — 


S30  THE   CHRISTIAN   ^IINISTRY. 

these  the  departing  sun  is  powerless  to  carry  with  it. 
They  claim  the  new  day  in  which  to  show  their  power 
and  to  do  their  work.  Live  deeply  and  you  must  live 
hopefully.  That  is  the  law  of  life.  I  should  like  to 
try  to  make  this  clear  and  real  to  you  by  a  few  illus- 
trations. 

1.  Here  is  a  man  who  has  believed  a  truth,  and  it 
has  been  clear  to  him  as  daylight ;  its  lines  have  been 
invariably  distinct ;  its  colors  have  been  always  bright 
and  vivid.  But  by  and  by  there  comes  a  change,  — 
the  lines  grow  dim  and  wavering ;  the  colors  become 
faint  and  blurred ;  it  is  not  all  as  definite  and  cer- 
tain as  it  used  to  be ;  the  twilight,  the  evening  of 
his  faith,  has  come.  Many  of  you  know  that  of 
which  I  speak,  and  you  know  how  to  two  men  who 
stand  side  by  side,  this  evening  of  their  faith,  which 
comes  to  both  alike,  means  totally  different  things. 
To  one  it  means  blank  unbelief,  the  melancholy 
death  of  faith.  To  the  other  out  of  the  dimmed  ob- 
scured doctrine  came  a  light  even  richer  than  it  had 
ever  shed  in  its  clearest  days.  The  character  which 
he  had  gathered  in  believing  it  grew  stronger  and 
claimed  richer  truth  to  satisfy  it.  His  faithfulness 
grew  greater  while  his  formal  faith  grew  less.  And 
visions  came  to  him  with  wonderful  assurance  of  a 
new  dawn  of  faith  in  which  he  should  believe  again 
as  he  had  never  believed  before.  So  it  has  been  with 
many  of  us  about  the  Bible,  and  "about  the  nature 
and  the  work  of  Christ.  The  evening  of  some  half 
faith  which  we  used  to  hold  has  bound  itself  close  to 
the  morning  of  a  new  and  precious  and  completer 
faith  which  we  know  that  we  shall  hold  forever. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY.  331 

2.  Or  let  it  be  not  your  faith,  but  your  fortune.  The 
evening  of  your  abundant  prosperity  arrived.  The 
darkness  gathered  in  about  the  radiant  luxurious 
life  which  you  had  lived.  No  longer  did  it  seem  as 
if  the  sun  shone  and  the  flowers  bloomed  and  the 
seasons  came  and  went  for  you.  You  said,  "  It  is 
all  over.  I  have  had  my  day."  I  cannot  help  hop- 
ing, I  cannot  help  believing,  that  to  some  of  you, 
since  you  said  that,  there  has  come  a  great  surprise. 
What  seemed  all  over  has  proved  to  be  but  just 
begun.  The  day  which  you  thought  you  had  had, 
you  can  see  now  that  you  had  hardly  touched. 
Prosperity  has  come  to  mean  to  you  another  thing. 
The  hours  in  which  it  meant  plenty  of  money,  plenty 
of  friends,  seem  now  so  thin  and  superficial.  To 
work,  to  help  and  to  be  helped,  to  learn  sympathy 
by  suffering,  to  learn  faith  by  perplexity,  to  reach 
truth  through  wonder,  behold !  this  is  what  it  is  to 
prosper,  this  is  what  it  is  to  live.  You  did  not  really 
begin  to  live  till  the  darkening  of  your  happiness 
brought  you  into  the  knowledge  of  a  happiness  which 
can  never  darken.  The  evening  and  the  morning 
have  been  your  first  day. 

3.  I  need  do  no  more  than  just  allude  to  the  way  in 
which  all  this  is  illustrated  in  the  best  friendships, 
which  make  so  large  a  part  of  our  lives.  The  even- 
ing gathers  round  a  friendship.  Some  circumstance 
suspends  the  daily  intercourse  which  has  been  our 
daily  satisfaction  and  delight.  Perhaps  the  great 
circumstance  of  death  comes  in ;  and  then  it  is 
proved  whether  our  intercou  rsewith  that  friend  of 
ours  has  been  only  a  thing  of  outward  contacts,  or 


832  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

a  thing  of  spiritual  sympathy.  If  it  has  been  a 
thing  of  spiritual  sympathy,  no  circumstance,  not 
even  death,  can  break  it.  It  has  been  gathered,  with 
all  its  past  history,  into  that  great,  cold  hand,  only 
that  thence  it  may  be  given  out  into  a  larger  and 
more  abundant  life.  Who  of  us  has  not  known  the 
dead  in  closer  knowledge  than  he  ever  knew  them 
when  they  were  living?  To  which  of  us  has  there 
not  come  the  certainty,  as  he  stood  by  some  friend's 
dying  bed,  that  his  intercourse  with  that  friend  and  his 
understanding  of  him  was  but  just  beginning;  that 
all  they  had  been  to  each  other  was  really  precious 
as  the  foundation  and  the  promise  of  what  they  were 
to  be  to  each  other  in  the  unseen  life  forever?  The 
eye  through  its  tears  looked  backward  for  an  instant, 
and  then  strained  its  gaze  forward  with  eager  curi- 
osity and  hope. 

When  Jesus  was  parting  from  His  disciples  all  this 
was  very  real  to  Him.  "  These  are  in  the  world  and 
I  come  to  Thee,"  He  said  to  His  Father ;  and  then  to 
His  disciples,  "Lo,  I  am  with  you  always."  The 
evening  gathered  round  His  active,  patient  life,  but 
the  Christian  world  has  always  thought  of  those  last 
chapters  of  His  incarnate  story,  not  with  reference  to 
the  past  which  went  before  them,  but  with  reference 
to  the  future  for  which  they  prepared ;  not  as  an  end, 
but  as  a  beginning.  The  evening  of  the  Passion  and 
the  morning  of  the  Resurrection  are  the  first  day  of 
the  Lord's  power.  It  was  "  expedient  that  He 
should  go  away,"  not  because  His  work  was  done, 
but  in  order  that  He  might  begin  it. 

This  is   the  value  of  experiences.     They  are  en- 


THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  333 

folded  iutx)  the  transitional  moments  of  life,  and 
thence  their  essential  power  goes  forth  to  make  itself 
felt  in  new  achievement.  Such  moments  are  like 
locks  upon  the  stream  of  time.  They  lift  the  boat 
to  a  new  level,  and  then  send  it  forth,  the  same  boat, 
on  the  same  stream,  still  to  swim  on  up  towards  the 
springs  among  the  hills. 

If  experiences  were  not  capable  of  being  thus 
enfolded  and  transmuted,  how  insignificant  they 
would  be.  Mere  facts  without  fertility,  mere  stones, 
not  seeds,  encumbering  the  soil.  Whether  there 
were  few  or  many  of  them  would  make  but  little 
matter ;  whether  the  man  died  at  twenty  years  old 
or  at  eighty  would  be  hardly  worth  the  asking.  But 
if  every  experience  makes  a  new  element  in  the  great 
complex  future,  never  lost,  contributing  something 
which  it  alone  can  give,  then  this  instinctive  desire 
for  a  full  life,  for  many  experiences,  which  is  in  us 
all  is  natural  and  right.  Then  to  lose  any  of  the 
legitimate  exj)eriences  of  a  full  human  career  is  a  loss 
for  which  one  will  be  poorer  forever.  This  is  the 
reason  of  the  sadness  which  no  faith  in  immortality 
can  dissipate,  belonging  to  the  death  of  those  who 
die  in  youth,  —  the  sense  of  untimeliness  which  we 
cannot  reason  down.  You,  a  man  of  sixty,  recall  to- 
day some  friend  of  your  boyhood  with  whom  you 
started  life  forty  years  ago.  He  died  at  twenty-one. 
The  two  brave  ships  had  scarcely  started  side  by  side 
upon  their  voyage  before  one  was  drawn  off  by  an 
irresistible  current  out  of  the  broad  sunlit  stream 
into  the  mysterious  ocean  which  lies  always  dark 
beside  our  human  life.     What  do  you  think  of  as 


334  THE   CHRISTIAN    MIXISTIIY. 

you  remember  him,  and  remember  what  a  rich  thing 
life  has  been  for  you  since  he  departed  ?  Do  you 
not  pity  him  for  what  he  has  missed  ?  Whatever 
eternity  may  bring  him  he  will  never  know  what  it 
is  to  be  a  human  being  here  upon  the  earth,  first 
twenty-five  years  old,  then  thirty,  then  forty,  then 
fifty.  Each  of  these  ages  is  a  separate  experience. 
It  means  something  special.  It  contributes  some- 
thing distinct.  That  contribution  his  career  and 
character  will  never  get.  We  do  not  doubt  the  com- 
pensations. Something  has  come  to  him  in  the  un- 
seen, celestial  life  which  has  made  up  for  the  loss ; 
but  still  the  loss  is  there.  That  special  thing  he  can 
never  be.  That  particular  knowledge  he  can  never 
have.  But  you  who  have  passed  through  each 
of  these  regions  with  sensitive,  receptive  nature 
have  the  power  of  them  in  you  forever.  No  dream 
of  celestial  life  will  ever  drown  them.  No  fire  of  the 
unveiled  sight  of  God  will  ever  burn  them  out  of 
you.  Their  form  is  gone  past  all  recovery  ;  but  their 
substance  is  more  than  your  possession ;  it  is  part  of 
3^ou.  The  experiences,  in  all  the  real  vitality  they 
had,  have  been  enfolded  into  you,  and  shall  be  un- 
folded into  the  work  which  you  shall  do,  the  life 
which  you  shall  live  forever. 

When  one  thinks  of  this,  he  feels  like  turning 
aside  and  exhorting  the  young  people  to  live  as  fully 
and  vividly  as  possible  at  every  period  of  life,  that 
there  may  be  as  much  of  power  as  possible  to  be  en- 
folded into  the  evening  of  life  and  opened  into  the 
eternal  morning.  It  is  good  to  multiply  experiences, 
if  only  they  are  things  of  the    substance   and  not 


THE  CHKISTIAX   JMLNISTKY.  335 

merely  of  the  form.  Do  not  let  the  certainty  that 
you  will  outgrow  any  period  of  life  keep  you  from 
making  the  most  of  it  and  getting  the  most  out  of  it 
while  it  lasts.  The  bee  takes  the  honey  and  is  con- 
tent to  leave  the  flower.  Live  as  abundantly  as  you 
can.  The  kind  of  life  is  most  essential,  but  the 
amount  of  life,  that,  too,  is  vastly  important.  The 
direction  of  the  stream  is  the  first  thing  to  care  for; 
but  when  it  is  pointed  the  right  way,  then  do  all  you 
can  to  increase  its  volume.  The  stronger  it  runs,  the 
more  it  will  keep  the  right  direction. 

But  now  I  want  to  turn  a  little  more  closely  to 
what  is  in  our  minds  to-night  by  asking  you  to  see 
how  all  that  I  have  said  of  long-continued  life  in 
general  is  especially  true  of  a  life  long-lived  in 
the  Christian  ministry.  There,  most  of  all,  experi- 
ences gather  themselves  into  character,  and  so  make 
the  material  of  future  living.  I  should  expect  this 
to  be  so,  because  in  its  idea  the  ministry  is  not  merely 
a  noble  form  of  human  life,  —  it  is  identical  with 
noble  life.  All  noble  life  is  ministry.  All  ministry 
is  noble  life.  Every  true  man  is  a  minister.  In  pro- 
portion as  a  minister  is  a  true  minister,  he  is  a  true 
man.  Therefore  I  should  expect  that  in  the  Christian 
ministry  more  than  anywhere  else  experiences  would 
richen  the  life  they  come  to  and  make  great  futures 
possible. 

I  want  to  claim  that  no  other  occupation  of  man- 
kind can  compare  in  the  richness  of  its  experiences 
with  the  Ministry  of  the  Christian  Gospel.  Let  me 
sing  for  a  few  moments,  in  the  presence  of  this 
beloved  and  venerated  pastorship,  the  excellence  and 


336  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

abundance  of  the  life  which  the  Christian  pastor 
and  priest  is  given  the  privilege  of  living.  It  ripens 
to  its  full  maturity  like  a  growing  tree.  It  has  its 
seed-time  and  its  leaf-time  and  its  bud-time  and  its 
blossom-time  and  its  fruit-time,  and  each  of  them  sends 
forward  its  contribution  and  makes  its  preparation 
for  that  which  is  to  follow.  And  in  each  of  them  the 
minister  who  lives  in  it  has  at  least  the  opportunity 
of  the  richest  relations  with  the  two  great  sources  of 
human  strength,  —  the  divine  life  on  one  side  of  it, 
and  the  human  life  upon  the  other. 

Think  of  the  minister's  possible  relation,  nay,  if 
he  is  trying  to  be  a  true  minister,  his  necessary  rela- 
tion, to  God.  God  is  tlie  granary  from  which  he 
must  be  immediately  fed,  the  armory  from  which  his 
weapons  must  be  immediately  drawn.  Study  and 
thought  and  contemplation  of  divine  things  are  not 
merely  his  occasional  luxury,  tliey  are  his  perpetual 
necessity.  He  must  sanctify  himself  that  the  people 
may  be  sanctified  through  him.  He  is  forever  being 
drivern  in4;o  the  deep  waters  of  humiliation  for  his 
weakness  and  of  penitence  for  his  sins.  He  is 
always  trying  to  understand  God's  will.  "  What  is 
the  divine  intention  in  this  man's  joy,  in  that  man's 
tribulation?"  He  is  kept  constantly  aware  of  the 
infinite  and  perfect  purposes  by  conscious  sympathy 
with  them.  "  What  God  wants  he  wants."  He  is 
forever  being  rebuked  and  encouraged  and  enlight- 
ened and  disturbed  and  settled,  and  then  redisturbed 
by  influences  which  come  directly  out  of  the  heart  of 
God  into  his  heart  which  is  laid  upon  it.  Can  you 
Gonceive  of  a  life  richer  in  the  profoundest  experi- 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  337 

ences  than  that.  Beneath  the  calm  surface  what  tem- 
pest and  what  sunshine,  what  tumult  and  what  peace ! 

And  then  turn  the  other  way  and  think  of  the 
Christian  minister's  relation  to  mankind.  Every- 
thing which  touches  man  touches  him.  The  dramas 
of  his  people's  lives  are  all  replayed  on  the  stage  of 
his  sympathies.  He  triumphs  with  the  conqueror, 
and  is  beaten  with  the  vanquished  soul.  He  goes 
into  business  with  the  venturesome  boy,  and  seeks 
truth  with  the  enthusiastic  student,  and  goes  to  Con- 
gress with  the  politician,  and  grows  rich  with  the 
prosperous  merchant,  and  fails  with  the  bankrupt, 
and  enters  into  peace  with  the  old  man  who  has 
weathered  the  storms  and  anchored  in  the  harbor  of 
his  fireside.  Whatever  tells  upon  his  people's  char- 
acters he  shares  with  them.  Their  temptations  and 
their  victories  are  his.  He  goes  with  them  up  into 
the  heavens  and  down  into  the  depths.  His  personal 
life  is  multiplied  by  theirs.  And  then  what  sight  and 
study  of  the  effects  of  circumstances  on  character! 
What  admiration  of  silent,  secret  heroism  which  no 
other  eyes  see  but  his  and  God's  !  What  knowledge 
of  human  strength  and  human  weakness,  —  strength 
often  where  the  world  thinks  that  all  is  pitiably 
weak,  weakness  often  where  the  world  thinks  that 
everything  is  absolutely  strong !  What  anxious 
feeling  here  and  there  all  over  a  nature  with  eager 
hands  to  find  the  spring  which  shall  set  free  its  better 
life  !  What  glimpses  of  unexpected  educations  of 
God !  What  fears  and  hopes,  what  visions  of  the 
mystery  of  man  ! 

I  am  not  talking  of   this  or  that  actual  minister. 


338  THE  CHRISTIAN    MLNISTRY. 

Certainly  I  am  not  daring  to  intrude  into  the  sacred 
secrecy  of  that  long  and  rich  ministry  which  we  have 
gathered  to  congratulate  to-night.  I  am  not  even 
limiting  my  picture  to  what  any  actual  minister  has 
ever  actually  attained.  I  am  talking  of  the  idea  of 
our  profession.  I  am  talking  of  that  which  glows 
before  the  eyes  when  the  young  men  see  their  visions 
and  the  old  men  dream  their  dreams.  There  are 
base  hours  in  the  ministry  in  which  the  minister's 
relation  to  the  world  is  mean  and  meagre,  perhaps 
there  are  whole  base  ministries  to  which  any  of  this 
richness  of  experience  never  comes ;  but  I  am  talking 
of  the  ministry  as  it  is  in  its  idea  and  as  it  is  in  large 
degree  realized  by  every  earnest  laborer  for  the  souls 
of  men.  There  is  no  stupider  mistake  than  that 
which  pretends  to  think  that  the  minister  is  an  in- 
nocent, ignorant,  amiable  soul,  shut  out  from  life, 
living  in  cushioned  security,  where  no  tumult  of  the 
wicked  world  and  no  breath  from  the  breezy  hilltops 
of  speculative  doubt  ever  can  intrude.  It  is  not 
true.  He  is  no  silly  optimist  in  spite  of  all  his  hope. 
He  is  no  dead  log  of  belief  in  spite  of  all  his  faith. 
Oh,  my  friends,  do  not  think  that  because  a  minister 
sees  the  capacity  of  human  nature  in  the  light  of  the 
Gospel,  he  does  not  therefore  see  its  danger.  I  hope 
the  tragical  peril  of  existence  does  not  seem  to  other 
men  more  terrible  than  it  always  seems  to  him.  I 
hope  the  faces  which  they  meet  upon  the  street  are 
not  more  pitiable  or  pathetic  to  other  eyes  than  they 
are  to  his.  I  hope  the  house-fronts  do  not  grow 
transparent  and  reveal  the  mean  and  miserable  life 
within,  the  corpses  and  the  skeletons,  to  other  men 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  339 

as  the  minister  sees  them  after  his  long  service  in  the 
crowded  town. 

And  will  you  talk  of  him  as  if  his  ordination  had 
been  a  spell  which  had  placed  him  forever  beyond 
the  reach  of  doubt?  Will  you  think  that  he  has  had 
somewhere  in  a  Book  or  in  a  Bishop  the  ready  answers 
to  all  the  fierce  questions  which  tear  the  souls  of 
other  men  ?  It  is  not  so.  Just  in  proportion  to  his 
love  for  the  truth  must  be  the  intensity  of  his  wres- 
tling for  it,  his  sense  of  the  strength  of  all  its  ene- 
mies. He  sits  upon  no  mountain  of  assurance  looking 
down  upon  the  world  of  struggling  men.  He  is  in 
the  thick  and  centre  of  the  struggle.  He  has  no 
scorn  of  doubt.     He  knows  its  strength  too  well. 

And  yet  while  he  is  in  the  midst  of  sin  and  doubt 
— here  is  the  privilege  of  his  position  —  he  cannot 
cease  also  to  see  goodness  and  faith.  The  wonders 
of  patience  that  he  meets !  The  splendid  victories 
of  spiritual  assurance  which  he  sees  !  Ah,  my  friends, 
it  is  not  possible  to  talk  of  such  a  life  as  that  man 
lives  in  the  way  in  which  foolish  people  sometimes 
talk  of  it.  It  is  no  dead  break  on  the  wheels  of  time. 
It  is  no  burnt-out  cinder  among  the  glowing  coals  of 
life.  It  is  a  very  wheel  itself.  It  is  the  livest  coal 
in  all  the  furnace,  making  the  other  coals  seem  cold 
beside  it.  As  Christ  in  Jerusalem  made  the  hot 
Hebrew  life  look  tame  and  worthless;  as  Paul  in 
Athens  "frustrated  the  tokens  of  liars  and  made 
diviners  mad,  and  turned  the  wise  men  backward  and 
made  their  knowledge  foolish." 

The  time  must  come  again,  as  it  has  come  in  other 
days,  when  our  young  men  shall  feel  the  vitality  of 


340  THE   CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

the  Christian  ministry,  and  seek  it  with  the  heroic 
consecration  of  their  lives.  If  they  could  only  know 
that  it  is  of  all  lives  richest  in  experience,  that  in  it 
the  passion  to  live  finds  fullest  satisfaction  !  What 
is  it  to  live?  To  crawl  on  in  the  dust,  leaving  a 
trail  which  the  next  shower  hastens  to  wash  away  ? 
Is  it  to  breathe  the  breath  of  heaven  as  the  tortoise 
does,  and  to  bask  in  the  sunshine  like  the  lizard?  Or 
is  it  to  leap  and  run  and  quiver  with  vitality  to  do 
things,  to  learn  things,  to  become  things  every  day? 
Is  it  to  touch  the  eternal  forces  which  are  behind 
everything  with  one  hand,  and  to  lay  the  other  on 
the  quivering  needles  and  the  beating  hammers  of 
this  common  life  ?  Is  it  to  deal  with  God  and  to 
deal  with  man  ?  Is  it  to  use  powers  to  their  utmost 
and  to  find  ever  new  power  coming  out  in  them  con- 
stantly with  their  use  ?  If  this  is  life,  then  there  is 
no  man  who  lives  more  than  the  minister ;  and  the 
generous  youth  whose  cry  is,  "  Let  me  live  while  I 
live,"  must  some  day  feel  the  vitality  of  great  ser- 
vice of  God  and  man,  and  press  in  through  the  sacred 
doors  saying,  "  Let  me,  too,  be  a  Minister." 

I  must  come  back  out  of  my  eulogy,  my  Psalm  of 
the  Ministry,  which  I  hope  has  not  carried  me  too 
far.  We  must  return  to  the  truth  on  which  we  were 
dwelling,  and  see  how  in  this  life  of  the  ministry,  the 
richest  in  experiences,  the  law  of  the  evening  and 
the  morning,  the  law  of  the  enfolding  and  unfolding 
of  experience,  especially  applies.  No  life,  I  think, 
more  than  the  ministry  has  a  true  continuousness,  and 
yet  none  more  distinctly  divides  itself  into  periods, 
each  of  which  unfolds  into  new  activity  the  expe- 


THE   CIir.rRTIAN   MINISTRY.  341 

rience  which  has  been  enfolded  by  the  period  which 
went  before.  It  goes  back  almost  to  the  beginning 
of  the  life.  First  came  the  personal  religious  history, 
before  the  boy  had  begun  to  think  of  ministries  or 
rectorships.  The  early  touching  of  the  nature  b}' 
the  grace  of  God,  the  first  mysterious  knowledge  of 
the  greatness  of  the  world  and  of  the  Sonship  to  the 
Father  that  gathered  itself  into  a  focus  and  revealed 
a  "  call  to  the  ministry,"  the  only  call  which  has  any 
true  significance  or  value,  the  earnest  desire  to  bring 
Christ  to  men  and  men  to  Christ,  the  "  Woe  is  me,  if 
I  preach  not  the  Gospel."  The  call  to  the  ministry 
completely  recognized  opened  the  long  and  happy 
time  of  education,  the  search  for  truth  and  the  discov- 
ery from  year  to  year  of  the  subtile  and  rich  corre- 
spondences of  truth  with  the  soul  of  man.  Education 
in  this  special  phrase  of  it  being  completed,  then 
came  ordination,  the  ever-remembered  day,  separate 
always  among  all  the  days  of  life,  in  which  the  young 
man  brought  all  that  he  had  and  was,  and  gave  it  to 
the  service  of  his  Lord.  It  is  not  a  day  merely,  —  it 
is  a  stage  in  the  career.  It  is  not  a  point  only,  but 
a  period,  so  clear  a  series  of  spiritual  activities  does 
it  include,  —  recognition,  gratitude,  humility,  submis- 
sion, privilege.  It  is  like  the  sunrise  as  it  stands 
between  the  dawning  and  the  day.  Then  comes  the 
earliest  ministry,  —  that  which  our  church  means  to 
express  by  the  Diaconate,  —  that  first  delighted  awe- 
struck touch  upon  the  souls  of  fellow-men.  What 
minister  ever  forgets  it  ?  To  what  minister  does  it 
not  stand  forever  separate  and  distinct?  All  that 
first  ministry  expands  then  into  the   richness  of  a 


342  THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY. 

full  Priesthood,  —  those  broad  glorious  days  of  the 
noontime  of  life,  when,  rector,  pastor,  servant,  friend, 
the  minister  goes  in  and  out  among  the  people  with 
a  recognized  right  which  yet  never  loses  his  sense  of 
his  own  privilege  nor  his  reverence  for  their  sacred- 
ness,  and  sees  them  in  their  joys  and  sorrows,  by 
their  joys  and  sorrow,  ripen  and  deepen  through  the 
grace  of  God.  There  is  nothing  to  compare  in  rich- 
ness with  those  years  in  any  life  of  any  man,  and  yet 
the  end  has  not  been  reached.  Another  unfolding 
comes  as  the  minister's  life  attains  its  full  maturity, 
and  at  last  he  stands  a  veteran,  perhaps  in  the  same 
parish  where  once  he  stood  a  boy,  and  a  new  in- 
fluence goes  forth  from  him,  which  is  the  power  of 
all  the  enfolded  experience  of  all  the  finished  years. 
"  At  evening  time  it  shall  be  light."  That  promise, 
which  has  been  again  and  again  fulfilled  for  him, 
finds  its  completest  fulfilment  at  the  end. 

Is  there  not  here  a  most  remarkable  power  of 
renewal  ?  Does  not  each  evening  open  into  its  morn- 
ing with  ever  fresh  vitality?  It  never  ends, —  the 
minister  never  retires  from  the  ministry,  and  is  a 
minister  no  longer.  His  ministry  changes  and  en- 
larges, but  never  dies.  Our  Bishop  Williams  in 
Japan  gives  up  the  cares  of  his  Episcopate,  but  it  is 
only  that  he  may  go  on  with  all  his  rich  experience 
into  some  native  village  and  begin  again,  burying 
himself  like  a  seed  that  has  in  it  all  the  packed  rich- 
ness of  the  sunshine  in  which  it  has  ripened.  "  The 
man  was  above  forty  years  old,  upon  whom  this 
miracle  was  showed."  So  cries  the  author  of  the 
Book  of  Acts  in  wonder  as  he   sees   Peter  and  John 


THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY.  343 

heal  the  lame  man  at  the  Gate  of  the  Temple.  Upon 
the  ministry  of  forty  years  still  comes  new  influence. 
It  never  loses  the  capacit}^  of  newness.  It  is  ever 
receptive.  It  is  never  dead.  "  Thy  raiment  waxed 
not  old  upon  thee,  neither  did  thy  foot  swell  those 
forty  years."  That  is  not  merely  a  record  of  the  past 
demanding  gratitude.  It  is  a  prophecy  of  the  future 
bestowing  hope.  At  the  very  end  comes  Pisgah,  the 
mountain  of  the  evening  and  the  morning.  The 
Desert  lies  behind,  —  the  Promised  land  before. 
The  servant  of  the  Lord  sees  for  the  people  of  the 
Lord  here  on  the  earth  great  regions  of  faith  and  life 
into  which  he  cannot  lead  them,  into  which  they 
will  not  enter  till  he  has  passed  away.  He  is  thank- 
ful for  them.  And  for  himself  the  old  servant  of 
the  Lord  catches  dim  inspiring  glimpses  of  an  unin- 
terrupted and  ever-deepening  service  which  he  shall 
render  to  his  God  in  the  unseen  world,  of  a  ministry 
which  shall  be  his  privilege  forever, — and  so  he  is 
content,  thankful,  and  hopeful. 

Thus  I  have  asked  you  to  think  to-night  upon  the 
ever-renewing  power  of  all  good  life,  and  especially 
of  the  life  of  the  Christian  Minister.  I  will  not  close 
till  in  a  few  last  words  I  beg  you  to  remember  what 
is  the  secret  of  that  power  of  renewal.  It  is  the  per- 
sistency, the  eternity  of  God.  Not  the  minister's  life 
nor  any  other  life  renews  itself.  The  life  which  has 
nothing  but  itself  to  drink  of  dries  up.  It  is  only 
as  it  draws  forever  of  the  timeless  and  eternal  life 
that  any  life  gets  freshness  and  perpetual  renewal. 
If  I  am  right  in  what  I  have  been  saying  to  you,  and 
the  life  of  the  ministry  has  this  special  power  of  re- 


344  THE   CHRISTIAN    INIINISTRY. 

newal,  it  is  solely  because  it  dares  to  stand,  because 
in  some  sense  it  is  compelled  to  stand,  in  peculiarly 
intimate  and  conscious  relationship  with  the  eternal 
God.  The  ministry  which  is  not  near  to  God,  and 
tries  to  subsist  upon  itself,  lives  feebler  and  dies 
quicker  than  any  other  work  of  man.  But  it  is  not 
only  on  the  ministry  that  there  rests  this  necessit}'. 
All  life  which  would  not  grow  stale  and  monotonous 
must  feed  itself  from  God.  All  life  which  would 
make  to-day  the  transmutation  place  where  yester- 
day shall  give  its  power  to  Forever  must  be  full  of 
the  felt  presence,  of  the  love  and  fear  of  Him  in 
whom  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever  all  are  one. 

I  beg  you,  oh,  my  friends,  if  sometimes  you  are 
trembling  at  the  possible  degeneracy  and  drying  up  of 
your  life  as  you  grow  old,  to  see  that  here  is  your 
salvation.  Fasten  your  life  to  God,  and  it  must  be 
young  with  his  perpetual  youth  ;  it  must  be  forever 
renewed  in  Him.  Remember  how  He  promised  by 
His  prophet  that  "  They  who  wait  on  the  Lord  shall 
renew  their  strength."  Only  the  soul  which  waits 
on  Him  knows  such  renewal.  It  cannot  conceive 
of,  certainly  it  cannot  dread,  senility.  It  sees  in  its 
vision  perpetual  renewal  securing  perpetual  youth  to 
all  eternity.  It  lays  down  each  task  to  take  up  a 
greater.  It  goes  out  of  each  room  to  enter  into  a 
larger.  It  sees  each  evening  set,  only  to  turn  in- 
stantly and  look  for  a  new  sunrise.  To  us,  whatever 
be  our  life,  may  life  be  that !  Then  thankfulness 
and  expectation  shall  meet  in  every  crystal  moment. 
At  every  moment  we  shall  say  as  Christ  said,  both 
"I  have  glorified  thee.    I  have  finished  the  work  that 


THE   CHRISTIAN    MINISTRY.  345 

thou  gavest  me,"  and  also,  "  Now,  oh  Father,  glorify 
thou  me  with  thine  own  self."  To  be  able  to  say 
the  two  together  is  to  hold  Evening  and  Morning 
blended  together  in  one  great  Day  of  the  Lord. 
Such  lives  which  cannot  die,  may  it  be  given  to  us 
all  to  live! 


XX. 

FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

*'  And  He  said  unto  them  :  '  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  Gospel  to  every  creature.'  "  —  Maek  xvi.  15. 

Once  more,  this  morning,  these  old  familiar  words 
press  forward  and  demand  our  hearing.  Once  more 
the  Master  stands  with  His  disciples  on  the  Mount 
of  Olives,  and,  looking  abroad  over  the  wide  earth, 
claims  it  all  for  Himself.  As  we  look  upon  the  pict- 
ure, two  other  mountain  scenes  rise  up  before  us, 
and  we  recognize  that  they  belong  to  the  same  spirit- 
ual world  with  this.  First  we  see  Moses  on  Mount 
Pisgah  looking  into  the  promised  land  which  he 
might  not  enter  with  his  people,  but  into  which  they 
should  carry  the  spirit  and  the  strength  and  the  laws 
and  the  hopes  which  he  had  given  them.  So  Jesus 
could  not  go  in  bodily  presence  into  Christian  his- 
tory. He  could  not  visibly  lead  down  the  centuries 
the  ever-increasing  army  of  His  disciples.  Some- 
times we  wonder  how  it  would  have  been  had  that 
been  possible.  What  would  the  Christian  ages  have 
been  if,  somewhere  on  the  earth,  there  had  lived  on 
the  bodily  presence  of  the  Incarnate  Christ.  So  the 
Jews,  conquering  Canaan,  must  sometimes  have 
stopped  in  weary  march  or  furious  battle  and  said  to 
one  another,  "  O  for  a  sight  of  Moses  !  "  but  it  was 
better  for  them,  and  it  is  better  for  us,  as  God  or- 
dained it. 


FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  347 

The  other  picture  is  the  mountain  of  the  Lord's 
temptation.  There,  at  the  beginning  of  His  ministry, 
Satan  had  said  to  Jesus,  "  All  these  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  will  I  give  Thee  if  Thou  wilt  fall  down  and 
worship  me ! "  Now,  standing  upon  the  Mount  of 
Olives,  Jesus  saw  how  good  it  was  that  He  refused 
the  tempter.  Behold,  they  were  His  without  Satan, 
His  by  the  gift  of  His  father  and  the  redemption  of 
His  cross.  It  was  as  if  He  took  formal  possession  of 
them  when  He  spoke  these  words,  "  Go  ye  into  all 
the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  every  creature." 

We  must  give  these  words  their  full  and  pictur- 
esque importance  before  we  can  rightly  treat  them  as 
declaring  Christ's  idea  and  purpose  for  His  Gospel. 
When  we  do  thus  conceive  them,  they  make  us  see 
Him  standing  and  surrounding  the  whole  vast  circle 
with  one  sweep  of  prophecy.  He  asserts,  not  inci- 
dentally and  casually,  but  most  deliberately  and 
solemnly,  that  His  Gospel  is  to  be  preached  to  all  the 
world.  These  disciples  and  their  successors  are  to 
do  it. 

When  we  hear  of  a  determination  or  a  purpose  of 
the  divine  Christ,  we  must  remind  ourselves  how 
much  it  means.  It  is  not  merely  a  resolution  of  His 
will,  —  it  is  also  a  declaration  of  the  necessity  of 
things.  God  resolves  that  which  must  be.  His  de- 
crees  of  what  shall  be,  are  really  announcements  of 
what  is.  His  knowledge  and  His  will  are  not,  as 
they  are  with  us,  two  things,  —  they  are  but  one. 
When,  then,  Christ  says  to  His  disciples,  "  This  Gos- 
pel of  mine  is  to  cover  all  the  world,"  He  is  really 
declaring  that  the  nature  of  His  Gospel  is  universal. 


348  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

It  is  such  that  only  in  covering  the  world  does  it 
fulfil  its  being.  We  are  forever  trying  to  make  the 
universal  partial,  and  to  make  the  partial  universal. 
We  tug  and  stretch  and  pull  to  make  that  which  has 
in  it  only  the  capacity  for  some  service  broad  enough 
and  long  enough  to  overspread  that  for  which  it  is 
all  incompetent,  and  so  it  cracks  and  breaks.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  try  to  narrow  and  fold  some  great 
principle  or  power  and  set  it  to  little  uses  which  are 
not  worthy  of  it,  and  so  "  to  partly  give  up  what  is 
meant  for  mankind,"  There  is  no  such  folly  in  the 
adaptations  which  God  makes  when  He  says,  "  O 
wind,  go  blow ;  O  sun,  go  shine  unto  the  uttermost 
parts  of  heaven  or  earth,"  —  it  is  because  there  is  in 
wind  or  sun  an  energy  which  only  the  uttermost 
parts  can  satisfy.  When  He  builds  around  some  life 
a  narrow  wall,  and  bids  it  work  its  seventy  years  in 
that  small  circuit,  if  the  wall  which  surrounds  it  is 
really  of  His  building,  it  is  because  there  its  concen- 
trated strength  can  work  its  best  result.  And  so 
when  Christ  said,  "This  my  Gospel  is  for  all  man- 
kind," it  was  an  utterance  which  told  of  what  the 
Gospel  was  as  well  as  of  what  it  was  to  do.  Not 
merely  its  destiny,  but  its  nature,  was  universal. 

When,  then,  the  Christian  faith  having  begun  its 
life  almost  immediately  began  to  spread  itself  abroad, 
it  was  doing  two  things.  It  was  justifying  its  Lord's 
prophecy,  and  it  was  realizing  its  own  nature.  There 
came  at  first  a  moment's  pause  and  hesitation.  We 
can  see  in  those  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Acts  how 
for  a  few  years  the  faith  could  not  quite  believe  the 
story  of  itself  which  was  speaking  at  its  heart.     It 


FOREIGN  MISSIONS.  349 

heard  the  ends  of  the  earth  calling  it,  but  it  could 
not  see  beyond  the  narrow  coasts  of  Judea.  But 
the  beauty  of  those  early  days  is  the  way  in  which 
it  could  not  be  content  with  that.  It  is  not  the  ends 
of  the  earth  calling  in  desperation  for  something 
which  was  not  made  to  help  them,  which  had  no 
vast  vocation,  which  at  last  started  out  desperately 
to  do  a  work  which  must  be  done,  but  for  which  it 
felt  no  fitness  in  itself.  The  heart  of  the  church 
feels  the  need  of  going  as  much  as  the  ends  of  the 
world  desire  that  it  should  come.  It  is  "deep  an- 
swering to  deep  ! "  He  who  studies  the  early  ex- 
pansion of  the  Christian  truth  feels  himself  standing 
between  a  world  which  must  be  saved  and  a  Power 
of  Salvation  which  must  give  itself  away.  The 
world  is  only  half  conscious  of  its  need.  The  Power 
of  Salvation  does  not  understand  the  tumult  at  its 
heart ;  but  both  are  real,  and  they  are  reaching  out 
for  one  another.  And  the  student  of  those  days 
feels  the  inspiration  as  he  stands  between  them.  It 
is  like  standing  between  the  sun  and  the  earth  in  the 
morning. 

This  is  the  fundamental  meaning,  the  fundamental 
truth  of  foreign  missions.  It  goes  as  deep  as  the 
nature  of  the  Gospel.  It  is  written  in  the  necessities 
of  the  human  soul.  And  now  comes  in  another  prin- 
ciple, which  is,  that  when  a  force  meant  for  a  large 
expansion  is  denied  the  large  expansion  which  its 
nature  craves,  it  does  not  merely  fail  of  the  larger 
work  which  it  is  not  allowed  to  do,  but  it  loses  its 
best  capacity  and  power  in  the  narrow  field  to  which 
it  is  confined.     It  is  unfortunate  that  we  can  never 


350  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

speak  of  foreign  missions  without  remembering  and 
taking  into  account  the  objections  to  them,  the  dis- 
belief in  them,  which  are  in  many  Christian  people's 
minds.  All  such  objections  and  disbelief  must,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  be  met  by  the  broad  principle  which 
I  have  just  now  stated.  Any  arrested  development, 
any  denial  to  a  power,  of  its  true  range  and  scope, 
not  merely  limits  it,  but  poisons  it;  not  merely  shuts 
it  out  of  regions  where  it  wants  to  go,  but  makes  it 
work  feebly  or  falsely  in  the  region  to  which  it  is 
confined. 

You  forbid  a  limit  its  right  to  grow  to  its  true 
size,  and  your  stunted  limit  is  apt  to  be  not  merely 
small,  but  sickly.  You  fence  a  city  round  with 
narrow  walls,  and,  shut  in  on  itself,  it  festers  and 
corrupts  and  fills  its  crowded  streets  with  misery. 
You  shut  an  idea  out  from  all  opportunity  of  appli- 
cation, and  it  becomes  fantastic  and  insincere.  This 
is  where  cranks  and  fanatics  are  made.  It  is  not  in 
ideas  going  too  far,  it  is  in  their  being  denied  some 
true  and  legitimate  activity  that  they  become  un- 
healthy. Whatever  goes  in  the  direction  of  its 
nature,  and  is  not  pressed  beyond  the  power  which 
it  naturally  possesses,  and  is  not  hindered  or  ob- 
structed till  its  work  is  done,  works  healthily,  and 
neither  grows  peevish  nor  grows  dead.  It  is  the 
fire  which  you  shut  in  tight  that  either  goes  out  or 
explodes. 

The  glory  of  liberty  is  this,  that  it  gives  everything 
its  chance,  it  lets  each  thing  do  that  which  it  was 
made  to  do.  To  force  anything  to  do  that  which  it 
was  not  made  to  do  is  not  liberty,  though  sometimes 


FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  351 

it  usurps  the  name.  It  is  only  another  slavery.  But 
the  curse  of  ordinary  slavery  is  the  curse  which  be- 
longs to  all  arrested  develoj)ment.  Not  merely  it 
shuts  power  out  of  fields  which  belong  to  it :  it  makes 
it  work  feebly  or  falsely  in  the  fields  where  it  is  un- 
naturally confined. 

This  has  always  been  true  in  the  history  of  the 
Christian  Church,  wherever  its  outward  tendency, 
its  missionary  activity,  has  been  hampered,  its  inward 
life  has  suffered.  Perhaps  there  has  been  no  illustra- 
tion of  this  more  striking  than  right  here  in  our 
own  New  England.  The  Puritans  who  came  first  to 
our  shores  were  deeply,  overwhelmingly  religious 
men.  They  came  here  for  religious  purposes.  Their 
minds  were  always  busy  with  religious  problems. 
Their  souls  were  eager  with  the  passion  for  spiritual 
growth.  They  tried  to  live,  they  did  live,  very  near 
to  God ;  but  they  had  little  immediate  missionary 
spirit.  They  expected  the  ultimate  submission  of  the 
world  to  Christ,  but  they  felt  themselves  summoned 
to  very  little  instant  action  coward  the  great  result. 
Their  thought  was  more  intensive  than  extensive 
in  its  character.  Except  where  the  irrepressible  pity 
of  Eliot  and  his  companions  touched  the  Indian  life 
they  may  be  said  to  have  had  no  missionary  work. 
There  is  much  to  account  for  the  fact  in  their  history 
and  their  circumstances,  but  the  fact  is  clear. 

And  what  was  the  result  ?  The  arrested  develop- 
ment of  that  intense  religious  life  wrought  its  inevi- 
table consequence.  You  all  know  something  of  what 
a  confusion  of  intricate,  complicated,  and  practically 
^icomprehensible  dogma  the  New  England  theology 


352  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

became.  The  endless  discussion  of  fantastic  ques- 
tions occupied  a  large  part  of  the  people's  thought. 
The  minute  and  morbid  study  of  their  spiritual 
conditions  distorted  and  tormented  anxious  souls. 
Strange  theories  of  the  atonement  grew  like  weeds. 
A  willingness  to  be  lost  was  made  the  dreadful  con- 
dition of  salvation.  Heresies  sprang  out  of  the  soil 
where  orthodoxy  lay  corrupt  and  almost  dead.  It 
was  the  sad  fate  of  a  religious  life  denied  its  due  de- 
velopment and  shut  in  on  itself. 

It  was  not  till  this  century  began,  not  till  at 
Williamstown,  behind  the  summer  haystack,  the  little 
group  of  students  consecrated  themselves  to  the  ex- 
tension of  the  Gospel  ,•  not  till  the  missionary  spirit 
took  possession  of  the  New  England  churches,  that 
the  mists  began  to  scatter  and  a  healthier  condition 
began  to  prevail  in  religious  thought  and  life.  The 
old  intensity  we  fain  would  see  again,  but  not  exactly 
as  it  was.  If  the  extensive  impulse  shall  go  forth 
unhindered,  there  must  be  a  new  intensity  in  time 
which  shall  be  better  than  the  old.  Already  we  think 
we  begin  to  see  some  of  its  signs.  They  make  us 
dream  of  what  it  may  be  in  the  fulness  of  its  power. 
And  every  sign  it  shows,  every  dream  which  we  dream 
concerning  it,  connects  it  closely  with  the  missionary 
spirit,  with  the  sending  of  the  Christian  Gospel  abroad 
throughout  the  world. 

I  must  not  linger  long  upon  my  way  to  bid  you 
think  how  true  all  this  is  with  respect  to  the  per- 
sonal and  individual  religious  life.  A  man  is  made  a 
Christian  by  the  grace  of  God,  and  for  what  ?  Not, 
as  we  have  said  a  thousand  times,  to  get  him  into 


FOKEIGN  MISSIONS.  353 

heaven,  but  in  order  that  through  him  the  grace  of 
God  may  go  abroad  and  some  piece  of  the  world  be 
saved.  Let  the  new  Christian  give  himself  to  that 
idea,  and  how  the  religious  life  thrives  in  him  !  How 
healthily,  how  vigorously  it  grows  !  How  it  bears 
witness  of  itself  at  every  moment  that  it  is  the  soul's 
true  life !  Let  it  lose  that  idea  and  think  of  itself 
alone,  and  two  results  must  follow:  first,  regions  of 
life  which  ought  to  have  been  blessed  by  it  go  with- 
out their  blessing ;  and,  second,  the  spirit  of  selfish- 
ness takes  possession  of  the  faith  itself.  Hardness, 
uncharitableness,  bigotry,  fantasticalness,  that  which 
I  think  one  comes  to  dread  more  and  more  in  religion, 
the  loss  of  simplicity,  the  loss  of  humanness,  which 
means  the  loss  of  divineness :  these  invade  the  precious 
substance  of  the  man's  religion.  It  is  possible  to  state 
what  occurs  in  various  ways.  It  is  possible  to  say 
that  the  Christian  neglects  his  duty  and  God  punishes 
him.  It  is  also  possible  to  say  that  the  outgoing  flood 
of  hfe  is  stopped  and  hindered  and  thrown  back  upon 
the  soul,  which,  overwhelmed  by  it,  is  like  the  dreary 
marsh  over  which  the  stagnant  water  spreads  itself, 
which  ought  to  be  energetically  pressing  out  to  sea. 

I  like  to  state  the  case  under  this  latter  form,  be- 
cause it  seems  to  assert  the  truth,  that  missions  are 
not  an  occasional  duty,  but  the  essential  necessity 
of  Christian  life.  It  is  not  an  exceptional  enterprise 
to  which  man  is  occasionally  summoned,  it  is  the 
fundamental  condition  without  which  man  cannot 
live.  It  is  not  like  an  army  summoned  once  or  twice 
a  century  to  repulse  a  special  foe,  feeling  itself  un- 
natural, expecting  from    the  moment  of   its  enlist- 


354  FOREIGN  MISSIONS. 

ment,  the  time  when  it  shall  lay  down  its  arms  and 
go  back  to  the  works  of  peace.  It  is  like  the  daily- 
activity  of  the  city,  taken  up  naturally  every  morn- 
ing, constituting  the  normal  expression  of  the  city's 
life,  never  to  cease  while  the  city  lives,  the  pulse 
which  shows  at  any  moment  what  degree  of  vitality 
the  city  has,  —  such  is  the  missionary  spirit  to  the 
Christian  Church. 

Of  all  I  have  been  saying  there  has  been  one  great, 
ever-instructive  illustration  in  history  which  is  the 
experience  of  the  Hebrew  race.  Have  you  ever 
thought  how  exactly  the  modern  Christian  who  "  does 
not  believe  in  foreign  missions  "  corresponds  to  the 
Jew  of  the  Old  Testament?  He  has  not  indeed  the 
excuse  and  self-explanation  which  the  best  Jews  had. 
He  does  not  say  to  himself  as  they  said,  that  it  is  for 
a  purpose  and  a  deliberate  design  of  God  that  his 
religion  is  shut  up  in  himself  and  forbidden  to  go 
abroad.  But,  without  the  excuse  or  explanation,  his 
condition  is  exactly  the  same  as  that  of  the  old  Jew. 
His  is  a  perfect  modern  Judaism.  Look  at  him.  Con- 
scious of  privilege,  perfectly  aware  that  God  has 
given  to  him  truth  and  light  which  are  inestimably 
precious,  holding  the  tables  of  a  divine  law  in  his 
sanctuary,  feeling  the  illumination  of  a  divine  wisdom 
burn  in  the  jewels  of  his  breastplate,  he  is  perpetually 
aware  of  how  his  life  belongs  to  God,  and,  looking 
forth  from  the  observatory  of  his  privilege,  he  sees 
the  whole  dark  world.  Sometimes  he  pities  it,  some- 
times he  despises  it,  sometimes  he  almost  hates  it. 
We  can  see  each  of  those  three  emotions,  now  one 
and  now  another,  in  the   wonderfully  distinct,  ex- 


FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  355 

pressive  face  of  the  Hebrew  which  looks  out  from 
the  wondrous  Book. 

This  modern  Hebrew  sometimes  recognizes  how 
the  same  spirit  which  is  clear  and  strong  in  him  shows 
signs  of  faint  and  feeble  working  in  the  great  mass 
of  uncalled,  unprivileged  humanity,  just  as  the  old 
Jew  could  not  always  shut  his  eyes  and  ears  to  the 
working  of  the  Spirit  of  God  among  the  Gentiles. 
Sometimes  he  hears  the  beating  of  the  waves  on  their 
restriction,  and  catches  glimpses  of  some  possible 
day  when  they  will  break  through  and  claim  the 
world ;  but,  for  the  present,  now,  he  is  here  and  the 
world  is  there,  —  the  river  on  this  side  and  the  sea  on 
that  side  shut  him  in.  He  will  not  cross  either  of 
them  to  find  those  who  lie  beyond.  He  prays  his 
prayers,  and  they  are  real  prayers ,  he  believes  liis 
truths,  and  they  are  real  truths ;  he  does  his  tasks, 
and  they  are  real  tasks,  —  but  what  is  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  Esquimaux  among  his  snows,  or  the  Asi- 
atic in  his  jungle,  is  nothing  in  the  world  to  him. 
The  very  question  smites  his  ear  with  no  reality. 

This  is  our  Judaism  !  Do  you  remember  Peter  on 
the  housetop  at  Joppa?  Can  you  not  see  that 
stanch,  sturdy  Hebrew  figure  stepping  eagerly  along 
the  road  to  Cesarea  after  he  had  seen  the  vision? 
Can  you  not  hear  the  words  which  come  pour- 
ing out  of  his  lips  as  he  stands  at  last  in  the  presence 
of  the  listening  heathen,  "  God  hath  shown  me 
that  I  should  not  call  any  man  common  or  unclean  "  ? 
There  is  a  delight  full  of  surprise,  "  A  wonderful 
truth,"  he  seems  to  say,  "and  yet  how  strange 
that  I  did  not  see  it  all  the  while.     How  strange 


356  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

that  I  ever  should  have  imagined  that  God  could 
think  any  of  his  children  unclean  or  common ! "  So 
we  all  feel  when  our  Judaisms  at  last  break  open. 
So  we  look  out  on  a  new  life  and  are  amazed  that  the 
old  life  ever  satisfied  us.  So  the  Christian,  made 
the  missionary,  seems  for  the  first  time  to  have 
known  what  his  faith  really  is. 

I  have  said  that  when,  with  the  arrest  of  its  devel- 
opment released,  the  Christian  faith  goes  forth  in 
missionary  effort,  part  of  the  blessing  which  results 
is  the  increase  of  health  and  life  in  the  home  Chris- 
tianity out  of  which  the  missionary  impulse  starts. 
No  part  of  that  return  of  power  is  more  valuable 
than  the  way  in  which  the  personalness  of  the  relig- 
ious life  is  kept  alive.  Do  you  see  what  I  mean? 
The  ordinary  long-established  Christianity  tends  to 
organization.  It  loses  the  person  in  the  institution. 
It  seems  to  trust  to  forces  which  have  little  of  in- 
dividual freedom.  It  runs  to  machinery.  But  the 
great  truth  which  missionary  history  bears  witness 
to  is  that  all  missionary  effort  must  be  supremely 
personal.  It  is  not  an  institution,  but  a  man,  that 
hears  the  appeal  of  Macedonia  and  sails  across  the 
sea.  From  Paul  all  the  way  down  through  all  the 
ages  it  is  a  line  of  shining  persons,  each  kindled  with 
his  own  faith,  each  working  in  his  own  way,  that 
makes  the  continuity  of  missions.  They  own  the 
church;  they  are  the  church.  But  they  are  the 
church  n  that  personal  expression  of  its  strength 
which  always  has  been  and  always  will  be  the  most 
real  and  powerful.  The  shutting  up,  then,  of 
missionary   activity   is    the   deadening   of  the   per- 


FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  357 

sonal  life  of  the  church.  The  non-missionary  church 
is  the  most  hide-bound  in  creed  and  organization. 

As  we  bear  this  in  mind,  our  eyes  and  hearts 
become  impatient  for  a  sight  they  long  to  see.  It 
is  not  simply  a  waking  up  of  the  church  in  a 
missionary  direction  that  we  covet ;  it  is  not 
simply  the  opening  of  stingy  pockets  and  the  pouring 
out  of  vast  wealth,  —  it  is  the  want  of  men ;  it  is  the 
standing  forth  of  brave  young  Christian  souls  saying, 
"  I  want  to  go.  My  message  burns  upon  my  lips 
until  I  tell  it.  Send  me  !  "  Are  there  none  here  ? 
The  choicest  and  the  best  are  none  too  good.  Are 
there  none  here  ?  I  tell  you,  friends,  the  foreign  mis- 
sionary work  waits  for  nothing  but  that  strong,  first- 
rate,  leading  men,  full  of  the  simple  faith  that  God 
is  the  world's  Father,  and  Christ  is  the  world's  King 
—  the  missionary  work  only  needs  them  to  show  its 
strength,  to  claim  the  souls  of  waiting  multitudes  to 
the  world's  end,  and  the  abundant  confidence  and 
support  of  Christians  here  at  home.  Whenever  such 
a  man  has  appeared,  his  power  has  been  wonderful. 
Men,  far  inferior,  have  done  enough  to  show  through 
all  their  failures  what  a  great  missionar}'-  might  ac- 
complish. That  he  will  come,  the  Christian  heart 
believes  and  waits. 

Until  he  comes  the  church  goes  on  obedient  to 
her  idea,  keeping  the  field  open  for  his  coming. 
Here  is  the  real  uncertainty  of  foreign  missions. 
No  man  can  say  when  the  true  missionary  will  ap- 
pear. It  is  not  by  boards  and  committees  and  estab- 
lishments that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  ultimately  to 
be   spread   throughout   the  world.      Only  by  fiery- 


358  FOREIGN    MISSIONS. 

hearted  preachers  of  the  truth  and  workers  in  the 
cause  of  Christ  can  that  be  done.  Just  as  it  is  not 
by  schools  and  academies,  but  by  great  minds,  great 
thinkers,  great  discoverers,  great  scholars,  that  knowl- 
edge makes  vast  advances  and  ignorance  is  dispelled. 
But  schools  and  academies  hold  fast  the  ground 
which  has  been  gained,  keep  the  ideas  of  learning 
vivid,  and  furnish  the  cradles  out  of  which  the  great 
creative  geniuses  proceed.  So  all  our  ordinary  mis- 
sionary operations  furnish  the  basis  for  great  personal 
work,  tempt  and  make  possible  the  strong  efficiency 
of  ardent  souls,  and  occupy  that  which  the  pioneer 
has  won  with  the  strong  grasp  of  permanent  posses- 
sion. 

But  never  can  we  forget  that  it  is  not  by  machin- 
eries or  institutions,  but  only  by  human  natures,  only 
by  men,  that  any  great  victory  of  light  over  darkness, 
of  truth  over  error,  is  achieved.  Therefore  we  pray 
and  look  and  long  for  men.  Let  them  appear,  and 
all  the  apparatus  of  work  may  be  most  primitive  and 
incomplete,  still  the  work  will  be  done.  Let  them 
be  wanting,  and  with  the  most  perfect  apparatus  there 
is  no  result.  Institutions  embody  ideas  and  offer 
opportunities  and  hold  results,  but  only  men  do  the 
world's  work.  Very  interesting,  very  precious  is  the 
church  as  an  organization,  with  its  history,  its  order, 
its  symbols,  and  its  forms  ;  but  "  how  beautiful  upon 
the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him  that  bringeth  good 
tidings,  that  i:)ublisheth  peace  !  " 

As  a  religion  becomes  more  deep  and  spiritual,  the 
preservation  of  its  essential  spirit  will  of  course  be- 
come at  once  more  difficult  and  more  important;  and 


FOREIGN   MISSIONS.  359 

if,  as  I  have  all  along  been  saying,  the  eifectiveness 
of  a  faith  depends  upon  the  absoluteness  with  which 
its  spirit  is  preserved,  there  will  possibly  enough 
come  times  when  an  inferior  faith  may  seem  at  least 
to  do  a  work  in  which  the  supreme  faith  of  Chris- 
tianity appears  to  fail.  This,  as  I  take  it,  is  the  real 
fact  regarding  that  of  which  much  has  been  said  in 
certain  quarters  very  lately.  It  has  been  declared 
that  Islam,  the  religion  of  Mohammed,  is  making 
great  progress  both  in  India  and  in  Africa,  where 
Christianity  moves  very  slowly.  It  is  ever  pleaded 
that  perhaps  only  by  a  previous  conversion  to 
Mohammedanism  can  the  lowest  forms  of  heath- 
enism mount  gradually  to  the  spiritual  heights  of 
Christian  faith.  It  is  not  easy  to  learn  what  the 
exact  facts  are;  but  if,  as  it  is  probable,  the  lower 
faith  makes  converts  where  the  higher  fails,  it  is 
not  because  the  higher  is  too  high,  certainly  not 
because  it  is  less  true,  but  because  it  needs  stronger 
men  with  purer  inspirations,  and  those  it  has  not 
found.  Let  the  divine  flame  of  the  love  of  Christ 
the  Crucified  and  of  all  His  Father's  children  for 
His  sake  burn  as  intensely  in  a  thousand  bosoms  as 
the  fanatical  enthusiasm  of  the  prophet  blazes  in  a 
thousand  swords,  of  his  disciples,  and  the  victory 
cannot  be  doubtful.  That  is  the  temporary  weak- 
ness of  Christianity  which  must  be  its  final  strength, 
that  it  can  fight  with  no  false  weapons,  and  is  strong 
only  in  proportion  as  it  is  pure.  Not  by  an  Islam 
Christianity  of  terror,  but  by  a  true  Christianity  of 
love  the  struggle  must  be  carried  forward  and  the 
victory  finally  obtained. 


360  FOREIGN   MISSIONS. 

The  close  association  of  the  quality  of  Christi- 
anity with  its  quantity,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  of  the 
sort  in  which  it  exists  at  the  centre  with  the  power 
which  it  exerts  at  the  ends,  gives  great  importance, 
from  the  missionary  point  of  view,  to  every  change 
of  thought  and  feeling  which  Christian  faith  under- 
goes where  it  has  longest  been  established. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said  that  there  are  two  great 
conceptions  of  that  faith,  within  one  of  which  or  the 
other  all  lesser  differences  may  be  included.  One  of 
them  makes  Christ  and  His  religion  to  be  unnatural 
to  man ;  the  other  counts  them  most  supremely 
natural.  I  do  not  now  argue  which  is  true.  I  doubt 
not  there  is  truth  in  both ;  I  doubt  not  there  are 
points  of  view  from  which  the  whole  idea  of  incar- 
nation and  redemption  may  have  its  value  in  its 
strangeness,  may  seem  to  bring  as  its  axDpeal,  in  virtue 
of  its  being  a  terrible  necessity,  an  awful  and  almost 
violent  remedial  interference  with  the  headlong 
ruin  of  a  rebellious  world  ;  I  doubt  not  that  there 
is  another  point  of  view  from  which  the  coming  and 
the  work  of  Christ  must  seem  to  be  the  flower  of  all 
hopes  and  struggles  which  humanity  has  had  from 
the  beginning,  "  the  Desire  of  all  Nations,"  the  most 
natural,  perhaps  the  inevitable  utterance  of  that 
Divinity,  which  has  always  been  in  and  under  human 
life,  made  violent  and  tragical  in  its  manifestation 
only  by  the  false  crust  of  inhuman  sin  and  selfishness 
through  which  the  divine  fire  was  compelled  to 
break. 

I  do  not  now  argue  which  of  these  conceptions  of 
Christianity  is   true.     I   only  ask  myself,  with  the 


FOREIGN    MISSIONS,  361 

second  of  them  so  largely,  so  more  and  more  largely, 
occupying  men's  devout  and  thoughtful  minds,  what 
will  be  the  effect  on  Christian  missions  ?  I  ask 
myself,  and  I  cannot  doubt  the  answer.  That  mis- 
sions will  fail  because  one  aspect  of  Christian  truth, 
deep,  tender,  strong,  has  claimed  the  Christian  heart 
out  of  which  missionary  impulse  must  proceed,  1 
cannot  for  a  moment  think.  That  truth  which,  just 
so  far  as  it  is  true,  enlarges  the  sympathy  of  man, 
breaks  down  the  walls  of  self-conceited  privilege,  and 
makes  the  lowest  true  shareholders  in  the  highest, 
—  that  truth  cannot  by  any  possibility  paralyze,  it 
must  by  every  certaint}^  invigorate,  the  outgoing 
energy  of  missionary  zeal.  It  may,  it  must,  change 
and  modify  and  color,  but  it  cannot  destroy,  the  mis- 
sionary spirit. 

If  we  believe  that,  then  we  may  well  put  to  our- 
selves the  questions,  —  and  with  the  putting  of  these 
questions  we  shall  be  ready  to  close  our  missionary 
thoughts  and  pass  to  our  missionary  offering,  —  we 
may  well  put  to  ourselves,  I  say,  the  questions. 
What  has  the  simpler,  broader,  and  more  natural 
Christianity  to  say  to  the  missionary  ?  what  to  the 
heathen?  what  to  the  false  and  imperfect  faiths? 
And  what  will  it  expect  as  the  result  of  missionary 
work? 

What  will  it  say  to  the  missionarj^  ?  It  will  say, 
"  Go,  like  your  Master,  not  to  judge,  but  to  redeem 
and  save.  Go,  not  with  threats  of  what  will  come 
without  your  Gospel,  but  with  glowing  promise  of 
what  may  come  with  it.  Go,  and  make  men  be,  by 
teaching  that  they  are,  the  sons  of  God.     Go  simply, 


362  FOREIGN  MISSIONS. 

naturally,  not  'carrying  Christ'  across  the  sea,  but 
knowing  well  that  you  cannot  find  any  darkest  spot 
on  earth  where  He  is  not  already." 

What  shall  it  say  to  the  heathen?  "Whom  ye 
ignorantly  worship,  Him  declare  I  unto  you.  The 
life  you  are  living  is  not  your  true  life.  You  are 
made  for  the  light.  Behold  the  Light  of  Life  !  Let 
Him  redeem  you.  Lo !  through  the  awful  cross  He 
saved  you,  if  you  will  be  saved  from  death." 

What  will  it  say  to  the  false  and  imperfect  faiths  ? 
"  I  cannot  hate  you.  I  cannot  denounce  you,  save  as 
the  evil  of  man  has  mixed  itself  with  your  truth.  I 
reverence  you ;  I  pity  you ;  I  would  interpret  you 
to  yourself.  It  is  my  Christ  that  you  are  feeling  for. 
Come,  let  us  seek  for  Him  together." 

What  will  it  look  for  as  the  result  ?  A  great  free 
service  of  Christ  throughout  the  world.  Each  con- 
tinent, each  nation,  each  soul,  serving  the  same  Lord 
in  its  own  way,  with  its  own  worship,  its  own  work. 
One  chorus  of  obedience  and  growing  goodness  in 
a  thousand  tones,  swelling  up  forever  from  the  re- 
deemed Earth  to  the  King  and  to  the  Lamb. 

The  truth  which  carries  such  messages  and  has 
such  hopes  as  those  must  be  dear  to  God's  heart,  and 
is  a  noble  truth  for  men  to  believe  in  and  live  by. 

But,  after  all  our  thoughts  and  speculations,  may 
God  give  us  pity  for  the  heathen,  and  help  us  to 
send  to  them  that  Gospel  which  is  our  Glory  and 
Joy  1 


A   Library   of  Information    in  One  Volume 

THE   TEMPLE 

BBLE  DICTIONARY 

Edited  by 

The  Rev.  W.  EWING,  M.  A. 

The  Rev.  J.  E.  H.  THOMSON,  D.  D. 


Indispensable  to: 

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The    Preacher 

The  Class    Leader 

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As  well  as  to 

Every  Christian  Household 

A  mine  of  rich  instruction  and  interest 


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THE    TEMPLE   BIBLE   DICTIONARY 


THE  EDITORS  OF  THE  DICTIONARY.    ' 

THE  REV.  W.  EWING,  M.  A.,  the  Editor-in-Chief,  is  a 
native  of  the  South  of  Scotland.  He  graduated  from  the 
University  of  Glasgow  with  distinction  in  Logic  and  Moral 
Philosophy.  After  taking  a  post-graduate  theological  course 
at  the  Free  Church  College,  Glasgow,  he  studied  at  Leipzic 
under  Delitzch,  and  after  ordination  went  to  Palestine  as  a 
missionary — his  work  there  being  centered  principally  around 
Tiberias,  on  the  Sea  of  Galilee. 

Here  his  proficiency  in  the  native  tongues  and  his  persistent 
activity  made  him  an  influence  throughout  the  surrounding 
country,  both  in  the  villages  of  the  peasantry  and  in  the 
encampments  of  the  wandering  Arabs. 

Returning  to  England  in  1893,  Mr.  Ewing  has  occupied 
important  pulpits  in  Birmingham,  Glasgow,  Stirling,  and 
Edinburgh. 

He  has  also  contributed  a  great  deal  to  current  literature  on 
oriental  subjects.  He  wrote  many  of  the  articles  dealing  with 
the  East  in  the  dictionaries  edited  by  Dr.  Hastings,  and  is  the 
author  of  the  well  known  book,  "Arab  and  Druze  at  Home." 

For  upwards  of  seven  years  he  has  contributed  articles  on 
oriental  subjects  to  the  American  Sunday  School  Times,  thus — 
so  to  speak — preparing  himself  for  the  very  responsible  posi- 
tion he  now  occupies  as  editor  of  the  TEMPLE  BIBLE  DIC- 
TIONARY. 

DR.  J.  E.  H.  THOMSON,  D.  D.,  the  Associate  Editor,  is 
also  a  Glasgow  University  graduate,  but  took  his  post-graduate 
work  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  was  medallist  in  Logic  and 
Moral  Philosophy. 

After  graduation  he  engaged  in  literary  work,  and  travelled 
on  the  Continent  of  Europe.  His  first  important  book,  **  Books 
Which  Influenced  our  Lord  and  His  Apostles,"  appeared  in  1891 
and  at  once  took  rank  as  a  standard  work  on  Apocalyptic  litera- 
ture and  gained  him  admission  to  the  staff  of  the  "Pulpit 
Commentary.  " 

In  1895,  Dr.  Thomson  went  to  Palestine  as  Free  Church 
Missionary  to  the  Jews,  and  was  stationed  at  Safed,  in 
Napthali,  the  loftiest  city  in  Palestine.  From  this  point  he 
made  frequent  journeys  throughout  Palestine  to  all  the 
points  famous  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments. 


THE    TEMPLE   BIBLE  DICTIONARY 


Briefly,  the  practical  experience  of  both  Editors  has  put 
them  in  a  position  to  know  what  is  needful  in  a  Bible  Diction- 
ary which  is  to  be  used  by  practical  workers  and  students — 
and  has  given  them  that  thorough,  first-hand  knowledge  of 
Bible  Lands  and  Peoples,  which  only  actual  contact  can 
bestow. 

THE  LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS  incudes  manyof  the  best 
orientalists  and  archaeologists,  the  names  of  such  men  as  Pro- 
fessor Margolioth,  M.  A.,  Litt.  D.,  etc.,  professor  of  Arabic  in 
the  University  of  Oxford,  Professor  A.  H.  Sayce,  LL.D.,D. 
C.  L.,  Litt.  D.,  professor  of  Assyriology  in  the  same  Univer- 
sity, the  Lord  Bishop  of  Ripon,  Professors  Mackintosh  of 
Edinburgh  University,  Wenley  of  the  University  of  Michigan, 
DaJman  of  Leipzic,  Anderson  Scott  of  Cambridge,  James 
Robertson  of  Glasgow,  being  guarantees  of  accuracy,  scholar- 
ship, culture  and  precision. 

THE  OBJECT  OF  THE  WORK: 

The  results  of  the  research  and  criticism  have  in  the  last 
few  years  been  cumulative  in  their  effect.  Egypt  and  the 
Euphrates  Valley,  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  and  Palestine  itself, 
through  the  researches  of  Ramsay,  Petrie,  Conder  and  others, 
have  yielded  up  enough  of  their  secrets  for  us  to  be  able  to 
lift  with  practical  completeness  the  veil  which  has  for  centuries 
obscured  Bibical  lands  from  the  accurate  comprehension  of 
Western  people. 

At  the  same  time  the  vastly  conflicting  views  of  scholars 
with  regard  to  the  date,  authorship,  mode  of  composition,  trust- 
worthiness, etc.  of  the  various  books  of  the  Canon  of  Scripture 
have  settled  down  to  a  stable  mean  which  is  not  liable  to  vary 
very  much  for  many  years  to  come — either  in  the  direction  of 
conservatism  or  in  that  of  radical  departure  from  accepted 
values. 

Consequently  it  has  seemed  to  the  editors  that  this  is  a 
favorable  period  at  which  to  put  forth  a  work  which  shall 
embody  late  results  in  both  Biblical  Archasology  and  Critical 
Inquiry  without  the  prospect  of  its  almost  immediately  becom- 
ing out  of  date  in  either  department. 

Excellent  work  has  been  done  in  some  larger  Dictionaries  of 
the  Bible  recently  published,  but  their  size  and  price  put  them 


THE    TEMPLE    BIBLE   DICTIONARY 


beyond  the  reach  of  many  who  are  keenly  alive  to  the  neces- 
sity for  competent  and  trustworthy  guidance  in  the  study  of 
the  Scriptures. 

The  Editors  therefore  believe  that  there  is  room  for  a  Dic- 
tionary such  as  this,  which,  leaving  aside  all  that  is  merely 
theoretical  and  speculative,  presents  simply,  shortly  and 
clearly  the  state  of  ascertained  knowledge  on  the  subjects 
dealt  with,  at  a  price  which  brings  the  latest  results  of 
scholarly  investigation  within  the  reach  of  every  earnest 
student  of  the  Bible,  and  which  for  the  working  clergyman, 
the  local  preacher,  the  class  leader,  the  Sunday  Schoolteacher, 
the  travelling  missionary,  offers  an  indispensable  vade-mecum 
of  scientific  and  critical  knowledge  about  Biblical  lands,  peo- 
ples and  literature. 

THE  BOOK  ITSELF: 

The  volume  is  a  singularly  handsome  one  of  eleven  hundred 
pages,  9  inches  by  6>^  in  size,  bound  in  dark  maroon  cloth, 
with  gilt  back  and  tinted  top  and  edges.  There  are  over  500 
explanatory  illustrations  —  many  from  entirely  new  photo- 
graphs— and  eight  colored  maps. 

A  sensible  series  of  ingenious  contractions,  not  only  of 
proper  names,  but  of  ordinary  words  also,  has  made  it  possible 
to  pack  information  very  much  closer  in  these  pages  than  is 
usual  elsewhere. 

The  Dictionary  to  the  Apocrypha  is  in  a  section  by  itself, 
with  a  special  introductory  article.  There  are  also  special 
articles  on:  The  Influence  of  the  Bible  on  English  Literature; 
The  New  Testament  Apocrypha;  Apocalyptic  Literature;  The 
Targums;  Versions  of  the  Scripture;  Philo  Judaeus;  Josephus; 
and  The  Language  of  Palestine  in  the  time  of  Christ;  while 
in  the  Text  of  the  Dictionary  everything  possible  has  been 
done  by  the  use  of  thin  opaque  paper,  appropriate  sizes  of 
type,  and  a  serviceable  system  of  cross-references  to  make  the 
book  more  legible,  more  intelligible,  and  more  generally  com- 
fortable to  read  than  any  other  book  of  its  kind  in  existence. 

It  is  the  devout  hope  of  the  Editors  that  at  last  a  Bible 
Dictionary  has  been  produced  which  will  be  the  standard  of 
its  kind  for  many  years  to  come,  both  as  to  fullness  and  erudi- 
tion of  contents  and  to  mechanical  excellence  of  bookmaking. 


Date  Due 


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